


Late Bloomer

by so_shhy



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: (16-year-olds having sex), Alternate Universe - High School, But on the other hand his parents are awesome and not dead, Canon-Typical Violence, Erik's life sucks a lot, I think that's all the warnings?, It all got serious by accident, M/M, Mentions of past abusive relationships, Mutant Registration, Mutant Rights, Proms and other high-school cliches, Shady government agencies and other comic cliches, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Underage Drinking, mentions of past underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 19:08:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 69,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11469825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_shhy/pseuds/so_shhy
Summary: Erik is a mutant jock with ISSUES. Charles is a geeky transfer student and totally human... (or is he?)





	1. Irresistible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tawabids](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/gifts).



> This was one of the very first stories I ever wrote, back when X-Men: First Class came out. It was written in chunks on a kink meme, it expanded ridiculously, finishing it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my fanfic-writing career, and I was deeply, deeply unhappy with the result.
> 
> Just recently I saw it crop up on a fic-finder tumblr, and I thought, who knows, with five years of distance perhaps I’ll have some idea what to do with it. So I did a little editing. And then a little more. This is the result. It’s 14,000 words shorter (no giraffes, sorry!), it’s written in the past tense instead of present (yes, I went through and changed the tense of a whole 70k fic) and the order of scenes in the second half has been significantly rearranged.
> 
> I don’t know if it’s better than it was, but I know that I’m happier with it, and that’s what really matters.
> 
> Huge thanks to Tawabids for being my staunchest cheerleader during the original writing process and for being a fantastic friend ever since.

“Emma, in her cheerleading skirt, on the hood of my car,” said Azazel. “She’s dirty as fuck. She can see your fantasies, right?”

The other boys hooted and sniggered.

“Too much woman for you, Az!” said Riptide.

“Better hope she’s not reading your mind right now,” laughed Havok, glancing over his shoulder, faking nervousness

“Why not Raven? She can look like whatever you want.”

“Gross, Rip,” said Azazel. “She’s, like, fifteen.”

“Hey, Erik, what do you think?” asked Havok.

“Dude, Erik doesn’t get a vote,” objected Riptide.

Erik looked up from his phone and around the faces of his friends: Riptide, dark and scowling; Havok, good-naturedly curious; Azazel’s blood-red face still wrinkled slightly in disgust. He’d zoned out of the conversation completely but his mind had been paying enough attention to get the gist.

“Yeah, not my thing,” he said, “unless she’s grown a dick since I last saw her.”

“Aw, are we boring you with our manly talk?” asked Havok, grinning.

“You’re being douches. You wanna talk about girls like that, talk about humans. Not our girls.”

Havok’s grin faded. “Fine, fine, my bad,” he said. “Subject change. Hey, did you hear about Seb Shaw? Bellshire High suspended him for not giving a blood sample. Angel told me he blew a twenty foot crater in their football field. Like, as revenge or whatever.” He mimed the hole with a satisfied gesture. “They kicked him out for real for that. Maybe he’ll end up here.”

Azazel shrugged. “Dumb. That shit doesn’t help anything.”

“Fuck you,” Erik snapped, with enough sharpness to draw everyone’s eyes. He gave Azazel a level look. “If you won’t get your hands dirty, go cosy up to the norms. Or sit and wait till they cut off your tail and put you in a cage.”

Azazel glared back. “I’ll get my hands dirty. Just not by blowing symbolic holes in football fields.”

“Whatever Erik. You’re the one who says Seb Shaw’s a psycho,” cut in Riptide. “You hate his guts.”

Erik scowled to himself. He did hate Seb’s fucking sadistic guts, but at least Seb wasn’t okay with mutants being registered like criminals and experimented on like animals.

He looked around the hall, thronging with students clustered round their lockers or heading for their classes. His kingdom. He was lucky. On TV, on shitty teen dramas, the mutants were often portrayed as the misfits, the weirdos. Maybe in some schools it was like that, but at Falsworth High, due to luck, due to Erik’s football captaincy, due to having cool powers, not the ones that looked weird or gross, due to Emma’s movie star looks and shrewdness – all of it meant the mutants were the alpha group. Emma ruled the cheerleading squad and Erik ruled the football team, and nobody dared to mess with them. But it wouldn’t always be high school. That thought kept him awake at night sometimes.

Seb had the right idea, even though the sight of him made Erik want to hit something.

Erik sighed. Nearly fifteen hundred kids in his high school, and he could name every single mutant without even stopping to think. They would always be outnumbered.

At that moment they were passing a kid Erik vaguely recalled noticing in a couple of his classes, a shrimpy boy who stood out somewhat for his sensitive face and air of gentle curiosity. Erik spared him a glance – cute, but human.

There weren’t a lot of gay mutants in town.

He walked on by. Riptide, however, turned and glared. He shot out an arm and snagged the kid by the collar, jerking him sideways. Finding himself jammed up against a locker, the kid gave a little grunt of surprise and blinked up in bewilderment. He had bright blue eyes, oddly innocent, and looked helpless as a kitten.

“I know you,” said Riptide. “You’re that transfer student from England that keeps bugging Darkholme.” He shot Erik a grin, and twiddled his fingers to form the air under the kid’s nose into a tiny vortex. “This one needs to learn a little lesson, I think. You like mutants, huh? Think you can go after one of ours?”

The kid raised his hand as though to scrabble at Riptide’s wrist, then let it fall again. “We’re friends, that’s all,” he said, with a surprising amount of composure for someone pinned by the collar and menaced by a microclimate. His accent was clipped and precise.

“She doesn’t need friends like you. You’re going to be a good human and promise me that you’ll keep away from her, aren’t you?”

Riptide twirled the tornado a little larger. The kid had to tilt his head backwards, jamming his skull against the metal of the lockers. His eyes widened, but he pressed his lips together determinedly.

Riptide laughed. “No? You’re a troublemaker, are you? You know, I really hate to do this…”

“Shut up, Rip,” said Erik. “Leave him alone.”

Riptide looked round in confusion, his tornado fading into a puff of air. “What the fuck, Erik?” he demanded.

“He’s already so pathetic that I’m ashamed to be related to his species. Don’t make it any worse.” Erik tried to keep his voice steady, to hide that the impulse to intervene had surprised him too.

It was a weak excuse, but they seemed to buy it. Riptide grinned. Azazel laughed nastily.

“True. All humans are pathetic, but I’ll admit this one’s ahead of the curve. Drop it, Rip, or he’ll go whining to Principal McTaggart.”

“Yeah, come on,” said Havok. “It’d be fun to blow his head off but it’s kinda not worth it.” He checked his watch. “I want a burger anyway. We’ve got time before class.”

Riptide let go, giving the kid a final shove that set him stumbling and sent his messenger bag slithering to the floor. “You’re hungry again?” he complained. “Fuck, Havok, can’t we feed you through a drip or something?”

“Screw you. Laser beams take energy.”

“You didn’t shoot any laser beams,” Azazel pointed out.

The three of them straggled, bickering, towards the cafeteria. Erik hung back, waiting until they were a safe distance away before turning around.

The kid was calmly straightening his blazer. “Thanks,” he said. “That was unexpectedly nice of you.” He smoothed back his rumpled brown hair with one hand and crouched to recover a pile of magazines that had slipped out of his bag.

Erik reached for the one nearest his foot. _New England Journal of Medicine_. It added ‘smart’ to ‘brave’ and ‘cute’ on the list of things he knew about the kid. Sadly, the list also included, ‘sniffing after Raven’ and ‘genetically inferior’.

“Don’t get used to it,” he said, standing up and handing over the journal. “Stay out of our way. If you don’t leave Raven alone you’ll have to deal with worse than Rip’s little tornados.”

The kid smiled ruefully. “Sorry, I can’t do that, even if I am only a pathetic human. But I’ll watch my back.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m Charles, by the way. Charles Xavier.”

Erik glanced around.

“Come on, nobody’s watching,” said Charles.

Erik took his hand. “Erik Lehnsherr,” he said.

“Well, thank you again Erik. I expect I’ll see you around,” said Charles, with another, brighter smile.

 _Not if I see you first_ , Erik thought. Those innocent eyes were unsettling. He felt uncertain, self-conscious, on the verge of blushing. No. He’d be staying well clear of Charles Xavier.

 

***

 

The Mutant Health Clinic was halfway across town. As Erik inched his way through the after-school traffic, he felt tension gathering under his shoulder blades and down his spine. By the time he arrived he had developed a mild headache and a bad temper. He signed in under the eye of the starched-up receptionist and kicked his heels in the waiting room, glowering at the floor, until his name was called and he was ushered through into the corridor.

The doctor waiting for him, silhouetted against the harsh fluorescent lights, was Stryker. Erik bit back a groan. Doctor William Stryker, with his weirdly intense breathing, his clammy hands and his coldly calculating eyes, and the smile that split his face like a crack in a plate.

Stryker met him with the usual mindless pleasantries. “…And how are we doing today? Ready to show us what you’ve got? Such a _rare_ gift you have, it’s a privilege to watch it develop…”

Erik kept his eyes on the floor until they were in the testing room, standing in front of the lab bench where the metal blocks were lined up ready for him.

“Are you ready? You know what to do. Start with the pure iron, please.”

The metals were indefinably soothing, their different weights and concentrations making rippling and overlapping dimples in Erik’s awareness. He dutifully moulded, folded, separated and melded, his mouth still twitching with distaste at Stryker’s presence. Stryker made faint murmurings of encouragement as he noted down the results, as though praising a trained dog for doing a clever trick.

Erik struggled through to the end of the test elements, keeping his temper only because he knew he had the final section to look forward to. He took a breath of relief when Stryker finally accompanied him out to the training field. Even with Stryker watching, there was a joy to flinging metal up into the air, the same joy he found in running the length of a football field with a whole team in pursuit. There were recording devices monitoring the training area, sensors embedded in the metal weights, but no particular routine to the exercise. The point was to stretch the limits of his power; pure effort, pure strength. He sent the heaviest of the blocks spinning in a wild scything arc and closed his eyes, feeling its motion and letting himself sink for just a moment into the warmth of the Earth’s own magnetic field. Then he sent more blocks into the air and concentrated on slamming them upwards as hard as he could, relishing the juddering shock as he caught them inches from the ground. Little by little, he felt his muscles ease. His chest expanded. He could almost have forgotten there was anyone watching him.

By the end of it he was panting and exhausted, almost too tired to stow the blocks away again, but he could tell that he’d managed more that at his last test, a month before. Afterwards, sitting on the bed in the exam room, he craned his neck to look at the clipboard Stryker had left lying on the desk. He could barely make out the numbers, scrawled and upside down, but the ones he could be sure of seemed high, higher than his usual rate of increase – and at his age he should have been levelling out, not getting stronger. He craned further, and was just about to hop off the table to get a closer look when the door opened and in came Mike-the-nurse with his little tray of sterile-wrapped needles and syringes.

“Hi Erik! Nice job in the game last week!”

“Thanks,” said Erik, cracking a smile. He let himself fall into familiar, easy sports talk, interspersed with the crackle of cellophane as Mike unwrapped and assembled his equipment.

“Alright, shift over and give me your arm. This’ll only take a moment.”

Erik rolled up his sleeve automatically, intensely aware of the metal needle waiting to pierce his skin.

Stryker strolled back in as the Mike was drawing the blood and picked up the incriminating clipboard again. “A remarkable increase, Mr Lehnsherr,” he said, flipping through the charts. “I’ll be most interested in next month’s tests.”

Stryker was just a greasy, powerless human, but his smile was wolfish. The teeth seemed to creep closer and closer, like they were trying to scramble out of his mouth. Erik looked away, down at his arm and the needle and the dark red welling of blood into the tube.

“We’ll have to try something a bit more challenging, I think,” Stryker continued heartily. “Perhaps I’ll bring some colleagues along to observe – with your permission, of course.”

“Whatever,” said Erik. His chest felt tight. Seb had said something, back when they’d been friends, before everything changed. _“They’re testing your strength, right?”_ he’d said, almost smugly, like Erik was stupid for not understanding right off. _“Well, what happens to you if you get too strong?”_

It hadn’t seemed important at the time. Who could get upset over a kid who pushed pennies around, or one who could hold onto a light bulb and save up the glow for later?

Their powers had just been silly tricks back then. Things were different now.

“All done,” said Mike. “We’ll check your immune system is firing on all cylinders and send over the results in a couple of days.”

Erik shot him a tight smile. He liked Mike, which made the lies harder to hear from him. If the blood tests had been just a safety measure to check that there was no physical backlash from using a mutant ability, they wouldn’t be a legal requirement.

As he drove home, his mind dwelled on rumours. The one that had always seemed most plausible to him was that the blood tests measured how much power a mutant used, to prevent cheating on the assessments. If you held back from showing your true abilities, your blood would betray you. It was the one he believed, pretty much. The blood tests were always done after a demonstration of power. Not just the assessments – every mutant kid knew that if you did something stupid and showy at school you got called into the nurse’s office to give a sample. It was just a thing. It happened. Seb must have done something showy before he got kicked out.

Erik’s thoughts always shied away from Seb, but he had to admit that Seb was strong. Maybe the numbers on Seb’s clipboard had been creeping up too quickly. Maybe he was trying to hide just how strong he’d become.

The light was fading as he pulled into the drive. His mother opened the door as he came up the path. “The lab rat returns,” she said. “Did they wear you out? There are cookies on the counter and dinner won’t be long, if your father will get off his backside and peel the potatoes.”

Erik tried to smile. “Great,” he said.

As he stepped past her into the house she caught him and looked up into his face, then pulled him into a hug. “Ah, bunch of bastards,” she muttered into his chest. “You don’t let them get you down.”

He laughed. “Mom, get off. I’m fine.”

“I know you are,” she said. “Who needs any tests to tell that? You’re my boy, you’re perfect. Go have a cookie.” She gave him a gentle shove through the doorway and into the bright room.

The cookies were still warm from the oven. He took a handful, poured himself a glass of milk and turned on the TV, surfing hurriedly away from a mutant rights current affairs show. He knew he should watch it but he couldn’t cope just then. Instead he settled on a mindless sitcom and let himself sink into the comforts of cookies and home.

 

***

 

Erik’s intention of keeping away from Charles Xavier lasted less than a week.

“This is your own fault,” he said, glaring at Charles. “I warned you.”

He was annoyed with himself too. If he hadn’t snuck round behind the kitchens for a smoke he would never have got involved.

“Yes, you did,” said Charles, picking a strand of spaghetti off his nose. “Would you give me a hand, please?”

Erik hauled him out of the dumpster. Charles squelched to the ground with obvious relief.

“Thank you,” he said. “You make a good knight errant.” He peered sadly into the neighbouring dumpster. “My bag’s in this one. Yuck. I think I’d rather get a new one than go digging around in there.”

Erik reached out with his mind and found the familiar shape of a strap adjustor. He concentrated. The bag rose from the depths and hovered in front of Charles. It didn’t look too bad, only a few stains that would probably wipe off, or at least dry into something that didn’t smell.

Charles reached for it eagerly. “Groovy,” he said.

“ _Groovy?_ What decade are you from?”

“Well it is groovy,” said Charles, with the tiniest of pouts.

Erik had to bite his cheek to stop himself from laughing. “It’s a superpower,” he said. “It’s what makes me innately superior to you pitiful second-rate humans. I’m not going to be called groovy by someone with gravy in his hair.”

Charles touched his head gingerly. “Really? Where?”

“Everywhere. What happened?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious,” said Charles, wrinkling his nose. It made him look a bit like a squirrel.

“Who did it? I only saw their backs.”

“They didn’t introduce themselves.” Then he glanced from Erik’s face to his tapping foot and gave in, grinning. “Alright, if you must know. It was your friend from the other day, the one with the tornados, and a rather terrifying person with a cigarette lighter. But they didn’t mean any harm. I mean, he didn’t actually set me on fire, did he? And I suppose I am making waves, being friends with Raven, but she’s lovely and I don’t know many other people.” He glanced up. “Oh, look, speak of the devil…”

Erik spun around. Raven Darkholme was sprinting around the corner, her eyes flashing gold.

“Charles,” she called, “are you alright? Someone told me-” Then she saw Erik and broke off, skidding to a halt a few feet away. “You total jerk,” she snarled, flipping her scales and growing at least a foot in height and breadth. She loomed over him as a hulking bouncer type, all shiny shaved head and tattoos. “You’re going to regret this. What did Charles ever do to you?”

 _Only smiled at me_ , Erik thought irritably.

“I’m really okay,” said Charles, but she paid no attention, still glaring.

“Calm the fuck down,” said Erik. He lifted the dumpster an inch and let it jolt back down to the ground with a crack that made both Charles and Raven jump.  “You don’t want garbage tipped all over you. I didn’t do anything to your precious human boyfriend.”

“Bullshit,” said Raven, her stubbled jaw tilting up with a frightened girl’s bravado.  “Look at him.”

Erik did. Charles was smeared with tomato sauce and covered with unidentifiable scraps, but his sunny smile was back in place. Erik gave him a meaningful _help me out here_ look.

Charles looked innocently back. “You did call me a pitiful second-rate human,” he pointed out.

Raven growled and advanced.

“I was _kidding_. For fuck’s sake, Darkholme, quit with the muscles. I’m not gonna beat up a sophomore. Charles, tell her.”

Charles grinned impishly. “He really was kidding. We were getting on famously, actually.”

“Seriously?” Raven slowly deflated back to schoolgirl size, looking puzzled. “You can’t have been. Erik doesn’t get on famously with humans, he’s the school’s notorious crazed mutant supremacist.”

Erik scowled. Notorious, yes, pro-mutant, yes, crazed, no. Or no more than he needed to be to scare the plebs into submission. “Watch it,” he said, giving the garbage can another rattle.

She glared up into his face, her little nose twitching with anger. “No, I won’t watch it,” she snapped. “If you didn’t do this to Charles then it was your horrible friends. It’s still your fault. They just imitate you like monkeys.”

“Now, come on Raven,” said Charles, “Erik’s done nothing but look after me.”

“Oh, you’re buddies now? He’d never be seen in public with you, though,” said Raven, jabbing an accusing finger. She was back in her favourite pretty blonde shape but her eyes still glittered yellow. “You just watch, next time you meet in the hallways. Or you could try to sit at his table at lunch; then he’d have to stab you with the cutlery. He’s a bigot.”

Erik gritted his teeth. Little know-it-all brat. “I’m not a bigot, and Charles is welcome to sit with me at lunch,” he said, before he could think better of it.

 _No, he absolutely isn’t,_ his brain yelled at him.

Charles smiled like he’d been given a puppy. “I can?” he said. “That’s great, I’d love to.”

 _Fuck_ , Erik thought to himself. He should have kept his big mouth shut. Charles was standing there in the shadow of a dumpster into which he’d just been thrown by Erik’s friends, still dripping goo onto the tarmac. There was no way anybody should look so happy in that situation. He told himself to backpedal, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

Raven shot him an incredulous glance. Erik didn’t blame her. He could imagine what would happen if he brought Charles to the mutant table, to where Rip, Azazel and Havok sat with Emma, her cheerleading minions Angel and Jubilee, and any of the younger mutants that were in favour. Humans weren’t welcome, not even the guys from the football team.

“We are so holding you to that,” said Raven, glaring.  “Tomorrow.”

Erik looked back at her coldly until her eyes flickered back to blue. She dropped her gaze.

“Come on Charles,” she said, and stalked away.

Charles turned to follow her, then paused. He blinked shyly up at Erik. “Um, by the way,” he said, a little flushed, “you called me her boyfriend. Well, I’m not. Just so you know.”

“Charles!” Raven yelled.

“See you tomorrow!” said Charles. “I’m looking forward to it. Oh, and thanks again for the knight errant thing.” Then he was gone.

Erik slumped back against the wall and reached for his delayed cigarette. Tomorrow. He had no idea how the hell he was going to explain this.

Despite himself, he smiled. Charles wasn’t Raven’s boyfriend, and Charles had looked at him like… like he was the kind of person it was great to be allowed to sit with. Like, despite the bunch of mutants that would be at the table, all busily despising him, with Erik there Charles wouldn’t be afraid.

It felt really good, to be looked at like that.

 

***

 

“Man, your credibility is gonna go through the floor,” said Havok the next morning, as the four of them leant on the railings out by the parking lot. “I mean, we like you and all, but you can’t ask Raven’s human stalker boyfriend to come sit with us. What are people supposed to think?”

“They’ll think what we tell them to think,” said Azazel. He stretched out his tail and flicked the tip at Erik. “It’s just some stupid bet. You’re the boss. We can make nice with the lesser beings for one day.”

“Fuck that,” Riptide growled. “We toss him back in the garbage where he belongs. You can bring him, Erik, but I’m going to make him sorry he came.”

“Do and I’ll cut off your balls while you sleep. With your toenail clippers. Messily.”

The others smirked. Riptide scowled. “Go fuck yourself Erik,” he snapped. Then, in a regrettably audible undertone, he muttered, “Norm-lover.”

“Shit,” Havok murmured.

There was a stifled silence. Erik felt the muscles in his back stretching themselves out. Suddenly he felt beautifully relaxed. He smiled. “Hey, Rip?”

Riptide looked uncomfortable. “Come on Erik, it’s fucking bullshit,” he said.

“What did you just call me, Rip?” Erik asked gently. With a leisurely flick of his mind, he brought his favourite chunk of iron slithering out of his bag.

Riptide swallowed. His gaze flicked from the metal to Azazel and Havok, then back to Erik. “Don’t be a dick about it.”

“Because I thought I heard you say something just now. Was I wrong?” said Erik.

“Jesus… look, yes, you were wrong. Just forget it.”

“I don’t think I was,” said Erik, letting his voice go cold. The iron snapped out from ball to sheet in a split second.

“Holy crap,” said Havok.

Erik bit down on a smile. He had practiced this and he knew it was impressive. It was nice to get a chance to try it out.

“Erik,” Azazel said warningly.

“This is going to make a sphere around your head, Rip,” said Erik, “and then it’s going to contract until the metal touches your skin everywhere. You know, like a mask, except without the holes.”

Havok whistled, grinning manically. “Dude, that’s really fucking cool.”

Riptide was white under his tan. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” said Erik, cranking up the smile, “I can do it to within a millimetre. It won’t hurt you at all. Breathing might be a little difficult though.” He moved his sheet towards Riptide, then slid it round behind him. The sides were already beginning to curve.

“Enough, Erik, he gets the point,” said Azazel. “Don’t you, Rip?”

Riptide nodded hurriedly, twisting his head round to keep tabs on the metal. “Seriously, point taken. That was out of line. If you want the human you can bring the human, no big deal.”

“You know,” said Erik, “I thought you’d say something like that.” He snapped the metal back into a ball and caught it neatly.

Havok burst out laughing. “Oh fuck, Rip, your face. That was awesome, I should’ve got it on camera.”

“Fuck off.”

Even Azazel grinned. “Yeah, well, you deserved it.” He leant back in his chair, tail-tip twitching with amusement. “So, we’re all agreed? We’re okay with Raven’s boyfriend joining us? We gonna be nice and inclusive?”

Riptide curled his lip. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Emma’s going to fuck him up anyway.”

Havok shrugged. “Can't argue with that. What can you do? Women.”

 

***

 

When the bell rang, Erik headed to class feeling a little better. He’d got over the worst, getting the guys in line, but Riptide’s final comment had been depressingly true. Emma was going to be her normal bitchy self, unless by some miracle Erik happened to have something she wanted.

As it turned out, he did. He had entertainment value.

When he cornered her after class to explain the situation she sat and listened sweetly, then patted him on the arm.

“Oh Erik!” she said, giving her infuriating tinkling little laugh. “That’s priceless, you big sap.”

“What?” he snapped. “Look, just leave him alone, that’s all I’m asking.”

She looked limpidly up at him. “I think it’s just adorable. Your blue-eyed boy blinks and all your self-righteous convictions crumble by the wayside. I’ll leave him alone, sugar, if you promise to invite me to the wedding.”

“It’s a bet. He’s a token human. It could have been anyone.”

“Is someone repressing his feelings?” she cooed. “You poor boy, you can talk to Auntie Emma.”

Erik fixed his mind on an extremely violent and bloody image involving Emma, three metal javelins, several lengths of cheese wire and multiple amputations. It was something he’d had numerous occasions to perfect.

She didn’t even flinch. “Lurid imagery. I’ve always said you had an artist’s soul under that ruggedly handsome exterior.” She patted him again. “I’ll make sure the girls don’t ruin your date. Now, must dash. Oh, and well done on the outfit. That turtleneck makes you look gorgeous and just as gay as can be.”

She flitted.

Erik moaned, torn between relief and black despair. Despair won out. Nothing, _nothing_ was more terrifying than Emma Frost when she found something funny.

 

***

 

That lunchtime, Raven made a production of her appearance, proceeding Charles into the room regally like the head of a procession with no tail.

“Everybody, I’d like you to meet my _friend_ Charles Xavier,” she said.

“Hello,” said Charles, looking around the table. “Nice to meet you all. Or, um, see you again,” he added, with a mischievous glance at Riptide and Pyro.

Nobody said anything, so Charles treated them to his angelic squirrel impression, set his lunch tray down on the table and slid into the chair beside Erik’s. Raven snagged another chair for herself and shoved at Havok until he made a space on Charles’s other side.

Erik looked around grimly. Emma had gathered _everyone_ , even the freshmen, some of them only a year or so into their powers. They were lined up against the wall, chattering and whispering and shooting meaningful glances at each other. The humans were doing the same thing – the footballers and cheerleaders spectating from the surrounding tables, the general population gawking in fascination, the outcasts peering from the forsaken corners of the lunchroom.

Even Charles’s composure wasn’t quite up to the task. He looked up at Erik and gave a nervous little smile, his wide blue eyes asking for reassurance. It wasn’t something Erik was used to, being looked at like that. As the unofficial leader of the cool kids he got respect in general, occasionally aggression, sometimes fear. Nobody had ever asked him for protection before. And Charles needed it – he was practically pocket-sized, and especially helpless among the mutant crowd. Any one of them could have squelched him with the flick of a mental muscle, and would have, too, if Erik hadn’t been there.

“Yeah, good to see you Charles,” he said.

Emma leaned forward, purring, “Charles, it’s so interesting to meet you. I feel you must be a very special person, Erik’s terribly fond of you already.”

“Oh, no, he’s just helped me out of a few little scrapes,” said Charles.

Erik glared at Emma, experiencing an almost overwhelming desire to crawl under his chair. He wasn’t sure if it stemmed from everyone seeing him with Charles or the knowledge of what she was almost certainly about to do.

She smirked. “How chivalrous. It’s really rather surprising for Erik; I’m fascinated. You must tell us all about yourself.”

“I suppose it was chivalrous,” said Charles, shrinking back slightly in his seat. “But there’s not much to tell about me, I’m ever so normal really.”

There was a chorus of sniggers. “Yeah, pretty much,” said Jubilee, snapping her gum. “Can’t help how you’re born though, can you Charles?”

“I wouldn’t say you can be boring by genetics,” he said, with an earnest smile. “We’ve got lots of choices, but you’re right the basics are set.” He nibbled on a french fry. “It’s hard to tell just how much is built into our DNA. All of you know better than me what a difference a couple of encoded amino acids can make to the human body. It’s really very gr-- uh, amazing.”

“Sure, we’re fascinating,” Riptide grunted. “You’re fascinated by Raven, anyway.”

Charles glanced at Raven, flushed and shook his head. “Oh, no, by all of you, by mutants in general,” he said. “I’m working towards a correspondence degree in genetics right now and I hope I’ll be able to concentrate my studies on the mutant gene at some stage… I mean…” he trailed off as the temperature suddenly dropped to absolute zero.

“You want to study us,” said Azazel.

“Well, yes, but…”

Pyro flicked his lighter. Azazel flicked his tail. Charles flicked his eyes frantically around the ring of stony faces.

“Erik, I think you’d better get your little human pet off this table,” said Azazel quietly.

There was a general shifting of chairs and flexing of fingers. Erik found himself half-standing, leaning forward over the table, body slightly angled to shield Charles from the glares.

Emma’s horrible tinkling laugh broke the silence. “Azazel darling, don’t be rude to our poor guest,” she said, reaching out to pat Charles’s hand. “It would be such a shame to spoil things when we’re just getting to know each other, now wouldn’t it?”

“Mmm, chill out,” Angel said, stretching languidly. “So Charles is a science nerd. It’s kind of uncool, but he can go play with Hank sometime.”

Jubilee snapped her gum again. “You guys are so uptight.”

It was female solidarity, the cheerleaders getting behind Emma’s usual desire to embarrass Erik as much as possible, but for once he was actually glad about it. Charles looked utterly miserable, but the edge of violence in the air has faded to a simmer.

Erik eased back into his chair and pressed his knee against Charles’s, as though he could respond to Charles’s silent request for protection with a touch. Charles shot him a look of such speaking gratitude that he had to look away hastily, and remove the knee, too. The contact was spreading warmth all the way up his leg. Determined to break the ominous silence, he groped for a topic of conversation. Mutants, no, politics, no, sports… okay, Charles wasn’t the jock type but sport had to be safe enough.

“So, you guys don’t play football in England, right?” he said, with an attempt at an encouraging smile.

“Not what you call football,” Charles agreed, gripping onto the question like a lifeline. “And we certainly don’t have these huge school tournament things that seem so important here. No cheerleaders either. The whole school spirit thing seems kind of bonkers, really… and I’ve just made myself even more of a hated outcast, haven’t I?” he mumbled to Erik, looking round at the still none-to-friendly faces. “Okay, I think I’m just going to go away now.”

“No, tell us about England,” Emma said, syrup dripping from her voice. “Have you met the queen?”

Charles gaped. “Um, no, I haven’t.”

“How about Prince Harry?” asked Jubilee. “I’d just love to get in on that action.”

“Like British royalty would interbreed with mutants,” sneered Riptide.

Jubilee pouted. “You’re ruining my fantasies, Rip. Fuck it. Stupid country, who wants to be princess of it anyway?”

“Weather’s shit,” put in Angel. “And the people all have bad teeth.”

Everyone turned to look at Charles’s mouth. He closed it quickly.

Emma flicked her hair. “At least English people have nice _manners_. I’m so sorry, Charles,” she said, turning to him and batting her perfectly mascaraed eyelashes, “whatever must you think of us?”

“No, please don’t worry,” Charles murmured feebly, pinned by her limpid gaze.

“But I do worry, sugar. It’s just so awful of them when you’re new here. You know, we all have a responsibility to make you feel welcome.”

“Um…”

“And you have lovely teeth. In fact, you’re just as cute as a button,” she added, obviously intending to pile it on until she’d reduced him to utter incoherence.

Erik felt a laugh bubbling up inside of him. Emma’s studied sweetness stomping all over poor Charles’s honest-to-god innocence was somehow horribly funny, like a car full of clowns falling off a cliff. He wanted to put his arm around Charles, to tell him that he was a moron who shouldn’t be let out alone, but it was okay because Erik was there with him.

Raven, too, trembled with the effort of holding in a sudden attack of giggles.

Even Azazel was smiling. “Emma, this is cruel and unusual,” he said. “I don’t even care that he’s a human; right now he has all my sympathy.”

Erik put a meaningful hand on Charles’s shoulder. “Yeah, that’s enough.” He injected an appreciable level of menace into the words, to remind them that he was _Erik fucking Lehnsherr_ and he could do whatever he wanted – even stand up for a norm in front of every mutant in school. He directed his glare at the freshmen and sophomores. “You lot, fuck off. The rest of you, talk amongst yourself and let us eat our goddamn lunches.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. Erik chomped into his burger. Charles poked at his fries for a minute or so. “Actually, Erik,” he said in a very small voice, “I think I’m done.”

 

***

 

Erik finally tracked them down in a corner of the grassy area by the sports field, screened off by a couple of bushes. He crept warily up, deciding to take a shot at being nice because (a) it was unlikely that anyone would see, (b) even if they did things really couldn’t get much worse, and (c) Charles might just possibly not loathe him entirely.

“That was the single worst experience of my life,” Charles moaned as Erik approached. He was flat on the chilly grass with the hood of his jacket tugged up over his face.

Raven patted him soothingly, glancing up at Erik with an expression more exasperated than angry. “You’re still a jerk, Erik Lehnsherr,” she said. “You totally broke him.”

“Is that Erik?” Charles asked. “Raven, tell him I died, okay?”

Erik poked at him with a toe.

“Or I went back to England. Or I have bubonic plague.”

“Or you got abducted by aliens,” Raven said.

Erik sat down cautiously. “Adopted by wolves,” he suggested.

“Suddenly taken pregnant,” Charles muttered.

Raven giggled. “Called away on a mission for the British Secret Service. No, turned into a cat. Zombified by an apocalyptic virus.”

“Talent spotted as a male model,” Erik countered.

“Male _model_?” said Charles incredulously. He raised his hood enough that a single baleful eye was visible. “I really hate you.”

Raven shrugged. “You’d make a good male model.”

Charles tried and failed to hit her on the knee and flopped back down. “Stop picturing it.”

“Make me.”

Intrigued, Erik mentally dressed Charles in jeans and a tight t-shirt and set him lounging provocatively against the brickwork of a graffitied building. It would work well, he decided. Charles could also do cute, huddled in a fluffy sweater on the couch cuddling a puppy. Or sprawled on a rumpled bed in a patch of sunlight wearing not very much, all smooth skin and shadowed contours, with a light dusting of hair…

“Earth to Erik,” said Raven.

The images dissipated, leaving neatly unfashionable Charles spread-eagled inelegantly on the grass. “Erik can be the male model,” he mumbled. “I’ll take the wolves, they’ll have far fewer vicious man-eating tendencies than that bloody Emma Frost.”

“I’ll take the Secret Service then,” said Raven. “You guys can fight over the pregnancy.”

“Erik’s,” Charles said firmly.

Erik smiled, tugging his coat tighter about himself. It was barely February and the air was cold, but his insides felt warm. “If it makes you happy.”

Charles stretched and sat up. “It would make me unhappy to _get_ pregnant,” he corrected, “seeing as I am an extremely manly man.”

Raven burst out laughing. “Of course you are,” she said. “That’s why I love you.”

She wasn’t nearly as much of a brat as she appeared to be, giggling and relaxed, without her sharp edges and defensiveness. It was reasonable enough that she liked Charles, Erik thought. After all, _he_ liked Charles and he had plenty of friends of his own. Raven however… the other mutant girls in her year were Kitty Pryde, quite obviously a cheerleader-to-be, and dreamy Jean Grey, harmless but astonishingly dull. For the boys there was Havok’s tiresome little brother Scott and his faithful shadow Bobby Drake, plus Hank McCoy who didn’t acknowledge the existence of anything he couldn’t fit into a test tube. Not altogether a prepossessing crowd. He didn’t blame her for choosing Charles Xavier instead. Charles was a senior, but as the new kid he wasn’t welcome in any of the existing senior cliques. It made sense that he’d chosen Raven too.

“I am manly, thank you very much,” Charles said, laughing back at her. “I may not be a hulking football player but I have my male pride. I admit it got rather bruised today, but it remains intact.”

“Stop whining, Charles, it wasn’t so bad,” said Erik. “Nobody died.”

“I sincerely thought I was going to. Oh god, when I said that thing about the genetics and they all just _looked_ at me. I like genetics, that’s all.”

A stray thought that he’d been too distracted to register popped back into Erik’s mind. “Did you say you were getting a correspondence degree in genetics? Like, an actual college degree?”

“Yes,” said Charles, wrinkling his nose. “I thought I could do with another one. I think I should have chosen to study social skills this time around though. I appear to be sorely in need of them.”

Erik looked at him for a moment, trying to work out if he was serious, then glanced over at Raven for help.

She shrugged. “It’s freaking bizarre. Don’t ask, you’ll just get overwhelmed by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.”

Charles was still in a state of Emma-induced shock, twitching at odd intervals. Erik looked him over critically. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t.

“That’s mean,” Charles grouched. “Why do I get stuck with a heartless girl who mocks my manliness and a mean guy who mocks my intelligence?”

“I thought Erik was your knight in shining armour,” said Raven, smirking.

“Yes, and some knight errant he tuned out to be, sending me in among those circling sharks. Though in my opinion I made a pretty fair damsel in distress.”

“Aren’t you meant to scream and flutter and faint?” asked Erik.

“I suppose so,” Charles said, sighing. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Next time Emma comes near me I’ll probably collapse helplessly in your arms.”

Erik’s brain juddered to a halt. For a second, he could do nothing but stare.

Charles blinked, looing momentarily surprised. Then he met Erik’s eyes shyly, with that look on his face again, the I-really-like-you-please-be-my-friend-and-protector look. “You did kind of stand up for me,” he said. “That was pretty noble, really.”

“You needed it. You looked like a rabbit in Emma’s headlights,” said Erik, aware that he was straying into territory where his words had nothing whatsoever to do with what he actually meant.

A little smile dawned on Charles’s face. “She’s scary,” he said. “She might be the scariest of the bunch. I was really glad you were there.”

“ _I’m_ the scariest of the bunch,” Erik pointed out. “I can keep her in line.” He was feeling slightly drunk with the last dribbles of adrenaline and that hesitantly unfurling smile, but he was still sane enough to wonder what the hell he was doing, flirting with a human. Charles had barely survived ten minutes with his friends. It was against the unwritten laws, it was sleeping with the enemy… ( _Sleeping with_ , his brain repeated.)

“You could count that as slaying a dragon, I suppose,” Charles said, “and add another mark to the knight errant column. I think you also need to climb up my hair or something, but we might skip that one.”

“I don’t think I could get much of a grip on your hair,” Erik agreed, and then felt himself blushing hideously.

 “I… um,” Charles said, and swallowed audibly, leaning in slightly closer.

With distant amusement, Erik registered that they were caught up in the most revoltingly saccharine flirtation it had ever been his misfortune to witness. If it had been anyone but him doing it he would have dragged them away by their collar for a sharp lecture on the meaning of dignity.

Raven groaned and got to her feet. “Ugh, I don’t think I want to be here anymore. Charles, I’ll see you after school, if you can tear yourself away long enough to actually go to your class.”

“Don’t need to,” said Charles distractedly. “I’m really smart.”

“Hey, so what does the dumpster count as?” Erik asked, smiling in the way that he knew made little crinkles round his eyes. _Don’t talk to Raven. Talk to me._

“Well, I suppose they were trying to sully my purity with garbage,” said Charles, paying no attention to Raven as she made a disgusted face and walked off.

“So I protected your virtue?”

Charles flushed. “I guess you did.” He bit on his lower lip. “Um… Erik? If I said something really corny like ‘you can protect my virtue any time’, would you ever speak to me again?”

The lip was even more distracting than the squirrel expression.

“I don’t know,” said Erik. “I might. You should try it.”

“You can… uh, you can,” said Charles, and leaned in until their lips were just an inch apart.

Erik quite naturally bridged the gap to kiss him.

It had been inevitable, from the very first moment when Charles’s lips pressed together in frightened determination as he leaned away from Riptide’s tornado. Quite without his knowing it, Erik had been waiting to taste them.

Charles was tentative at first, little soft nibbles, and Erik hauled him in to show him how it should be done. He brushed a thumb down Charles’s neck and was rewarded by a little gasp. Charles’s arms scrabbled their way around his neck.

 _I’m kissing a human,_ Erik though crazily. Not Seb, not Logan, an actual, powerless human. Someone he could kill with a thought.

Someone he could protect with all his strength.

 

***

 

Once he’d given in to temptation it was so much easier to give in again. And again. And again.

Over the next week or so it went from bad to worse. Charles was just so… so bright. Not bright as in smart, though he was that, but bright as in his presence could light up a room.

Erik found himself constantly aware of it, smiling involuntarily when Charles was close, shooting little glances across the classroom and stealing kisses in deserted corridors.

Charles started sitting casually on the bleachers during track practice, ostensibly engrossed in his journal articles and periodically peeping over the top of them at Erik. They would sneak off and sprawl together on the grass after school gazing up at the grey clouds until they were too chilled to stay outdoors.

When Charles left his jacket behind after French class Erik picked it up and breathed in the scent of Charles. Then he caught himself doing it and hoped to god nobody had seen what he’d become.

Altogether, Emma was right. When he was with Charles he was a great big sap.

When he wasn’t with Charles, things were different.

He had no other option. Since that lunchtime, everyone knew there was something going on. Although Charles had gone back to sitting with Raven, well away from the main mutant table, the school was still buzzing with gossip. Havok seemed to accept that it was a temporary act of insanity, but Riptide and Azazel were still edgy and suspicious. Erik knew that if it had been one of them, traitorously going all pathetic over a human girl, he’d have felt exactly the same way.

So he played it down. He spent half of every day saying things like, “I’m just fucking around,” or, “He’s really horny, can’t get enough,” or, “You don’t get it, you’d totally hit that if you were gay.” He was supposed to look after Charles, to take care of him, to protect him from all the crap in the world, and instead he was saying shitty things behind his back. He felt more of a dick every time.

Maintaining the pretence was hard work. It would have been really stupid to spend too much time with Charles, it would have made it look like he was serious, so he rationed his contact and forced himself to act normal. He dragged himself away from covert make-out sessions to play super-lethal-mutant-ball in the quarry, or to pick fights with Emma, or just to hang out with the guys, his normal default setting. He was practically holding a big sign above his head: STILL ERIK, JUST GETTING SOME ACTION.

The tragic thing was that it worked. For once, being gay was an advantage. With so few mutants to choose from, people accepted that Erik had to have his fun somewhere. He started to hear his own comments reflected back at him, ‘there goes Erik’s bit of ass,’ and ‘bet he can do some amazing things with that mouth,’ and plenty of sniggers.

He was too much of a coward even to glare at them.

Charles seemed oblivious. Of course, nobody said anything to his face. Raven, though, was starting to shoot Erik looks that were first worried, then confused, and later, increasingly, furious.

Then he found that Charles had joined the chess club.

Erik felt his credibility start to wobble. People in the chess club, practically by definition, were neither fun nor horny not hit-worthy. There was no possible reason that he could have for hanging around with a chess nerd.

The whispers started up again.

Erik thought, _there is a god and he really fucking hates me._

The first Thursday, Erik didn’t know about the chess thing till afterwards. The second, though, he took matters into his own hands, cornered Charles on the way over to the classroom where the club met, and dragged him around the bushes by the biology lab. It was a shadowed nook, semi-out-of-the-way, and Charles looked quite keen until he saw Erik’s expression.

“What?” he said, a little bewildered.

“This is an intervention,” Erik told him. “No chess club. You’re not going.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because in high school terms that’s as low as it’s possible to fall. I can’t let you do that to yourself.”

Charles’s nosed twitched disapprovingly. “Honestly, Erik, you’re being ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t mind what people think. This… this caste system thing you all have is very silly anyway. It’s chess. It’s nothing socially important. All it involves is moving little men around on a board.”

“It is important! I can’t date someone in the chess club.”

Charles blinked and Erik was suddenly certain that he was about to take the path that Erik really wanted to avoid, the _you’re ashamed of me_ path which, well, yes, he was. More ashamed of himself, but still unavoidably ashamed of Charles, this tiny geeky English human who, for no good reason, he couldn’t seem to stay away from.

But this being Charles, and Charles being socially clueless, things took another route entirely.

“Um,” Charles said, flushing. He met Erik’s eyes shyly and smiled. “So… we’re dating then? Officially?”

In the world’s most _unofficial_ sense of officially, Erik thought, almost overwhelmed by the sudden glow. Charles was stunning when he smiled. He scrambled for a way to avoid answering, couldn’t think of one, and opted for simply pulling Charles in by his shirt-front and kissing him stupid. It was a tried and tested method of distraction.

Charles, true to form, made a happy noise and submitted willingly, tilting his head just so, allowing Erik to take shameless advantage of that irresistible mouth. Charles was getting really good at kissing, Erik thought as he nuzzled the sensitive spot on his neck then slid back up.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” Charles mumbled.

Erik grinned to himself. Mission accomplished. Distraction complete. He nipped and tugged at Charles’s lower lip, slowly, teasingly, then dived back in. It was supposed to be playful but Charles’s tongue wrapped around his own and after a while he couldn’t help but deepen the kiss, pulling Charles closer with a hand on the back of his head.

Charles went from blissed out to shameless in an instant. He surged desperately forward with a little hitching moan. His hand slid down to Erik’s ass, gripped, pressed, and he tugged himself against Erik’s body. Heat blossomed between them. Charles moaned again and shifted, searching for friction. Erik shuddered. He couldn’t help returning the pressure, fingers slipping up under Charles’s shirt and digging into the soft skin of his back.

Suddenly he realised things were approaching X-rated levels. Fast.

 _He’s really horny_ , said his own cruel voice in his head.

With what felt like the greatest effort of his life, he took Charles firmly by the shoulders and pushed him away.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he gasped, “cut it out. We’re practically in public.”

Charles wriggled at arm’s length, flushed and ravished, red lips glistening and breath coming in little gasps. He looked like a starving man who’d just had a hot dinner whisked away from under his nose. He squirmed out of Erik’s grip and flopped back against the wall next to him, wiping a hand down his face, then finally turned his head to fix Erik with a glare of the deepest resentment.

“How exactly,” he said irritably, “do you expect me to remember that when you have your tongue in my mouth?”

Seeing as the whole thing had been designed as an attempt to distract him, Erik didn’t have an answer for that one.

“It’s your fault,” Charles continued, “you started it.”

“I started kissing. You started on the first page of the Karma Sutra. You have absolutely no self-control.” The impulse to grab Charles and start it all over again was practically irresistible.

Charles’s eyes flicked down to his mouth, then back. “Again, not my fault,” he said distractedly. “Simple cause and effect. You do things that make me do things.”

Erik shook his head. “Entirely your fault,” he managed. The absence of Charles’s body tingled all the way down him.

“Bloody hell,” Charles said weakly, dragging his eyes away and looking around. Beyond the bush, a handful of sophomores were hanging out on the grass, fortunately facing the other way and focused on each other. “Alright, maybe that was going a bit far for school property.” He heaved a sigh. “What were we talking about before you so rudely interrupted me?”

“Chess,” Erik lied.

“Chess?” Charles said blankly.

“Yeah. Chess. You know, the game? With the little men and the board?”

Light dawned. “Oh. That chess. I remember. You don’t want me to go to chess club.” Charles pouted his kiss-reddened lips. “But Erik, I like chess and it’s really no fun on your own.”

The perfect solution suddenly presented itself. “You can play with me,” Erik said decidedly.

“I just tried and you wouldn’t let me. Besides, that’s not chess, it’s an entirely different game.”

“I meant chess, you moron,” said Erik, biting down on a laugh.

Charles put his head on one side curiously. “Wait, you play?” he asked, rather too surprised for Erik’s liking.

“Yes, I play. You’re not the only person here with a brain. I play with my dad once a week.”

He also played online when he was bored of his homework, and with every single member of his dad’s family when they visited, and on occasion with Havok, who was surprisingly keen though astonishingly bad at it. But he was hardly going to join the chess club.

“That’s great,” Charles said, tugging at his hand and practically bouncing with pleasure. “That’s perfect, you can come with me.”

Erik groaned. That was, without question, the worst possible thing he could do.

But, god help him, he followed Charles into the classroom.

 

***

 

That afternoon, after school, he sprawled on his back on the bed trying to work out what the hell he was doing. He’d just spent lunchtime at chess club, with Charles. For Charles. And, as Emma’s very intense expression had told him when she passed him in the hall, that was no longer the unofficial kind of official. That was just about as official as a high school relationship could get.

There could be no more pretence. If he didn’t dump Charles right away, they would be dating. Swim or sink, sink or swim.

One way, Azazel and Riptide would totally lose it, and they’d be right to. He’d be saying that a human mattered to him, mattered more than other mutants. But if he chose the other way he would lose Charles.

Chess club, the scene of his undoing. He had been thinking about the match ever since, the two of them sitting there head to head. It had been intense, an unsettling glimpse of a different, unexpected Charles, a boy who delighted in being challenged, capable of astonishing boldness and ruthless manoeuvring, utterly self-assured.

He sighed. He had one of his own chess pieces in his hand, the sinuous curve of a knight, and he reached for a scrap of metal, flicked it into a sheet, wrapped it around the piece, contracted it until it touched everywhere, beautiful and shining.

Yes, very funny.

“Erik,” his mom called up.

At least it had been kind of fun. Erik had lost, but not by much, and he gave himself even odds of winning next time. The other chess geeks had gathered around to watch, initially because of the unheard-of presence of the school’s premier mutant jock in their club but later because it had been a tense, well-fought match which made for a good show, if you liked that sort of thing.

So by the next day not only would everyone know that Erik had sunk so low as to go to chess club, they would also know that he was a really good player.

He frowned, wondering whether that made it better or worse.

“Erik!” his mom called again.

Erik raised his head, dragging his mind away from his distractions. “Yeah, I’m up here.”

“I know you’re up there,” she hollered. “I want you to get down here. You’ve got visitors.”

He was instantly alert. _Please let it not be the guys come to interrogate me_ , he prayed to whoever might be listening. But if it had been, she would have said so. At least, she wouldn’t have called them visitors, she’d have yelled, “Erik, your pack of goons is here, get them off my porch!”

Which meant it was probably Charles, he realised, with a strange sinking feeling. No, she had said visitors, plural. Charles and Raven.

As he went down he could hear his doting mother cheerfully bemoaning his manners, she raised him wrong, kids these days, nothing but trouble.

He paused at the foot of the stairs. Charles looked politely interested. Raven looked gleeful, but when she glanced up at Erik her face took on a brief expression of intense distaste.

He suddenly had a damn good idea of why they’d come.

“Hi,” he said. “Mom, quit it.”

“See, what did I tell you? No respect. Erik, introduce me to your friends.”

It was all he needed, parental embarrassment on top of everything else. But he knew better than to try to wriggle out of it. “Guys, this is my mom. Mom, Charles and Raven from school.”

She smiled warmly on them both. “Lovely to meet you. Now, tell me what you do.” They looked blank, as most people did when unexpectedly faced with Erik’s mother. “Powers!” she prompted. “Do I need to keep a fire extinguisher handy?”

“Mom! No. Raven’s a shapeshifter and Charles is just a Charles.” A Charles? What the fuck was wrong with him? “A person,” he corrected himself. “A regular person.”

“Really?” She looked surprised. “Well that’s… refreshing, I suppose.” She glanced from Charles to Erik, Erik to Charles and he could see her putting two and two together and making about a thousand. “Okay, no fire extinguisher required, you may take them away.”

“Come upstairs,” said Erik. He led them up, feeling Raven’s death-glare on the back of his neck the whole way, and ushered them into his room.

Charles gravitated to his side and leaned close for a brief moment. “Hi,” he said, not asking for a kiss, just pressing his head briefly against Erik’s cheek before stepping away.

“Hi,” said Erik, beginning to get really nervous. There had been something off about that greeting, something unhappy. “Both of you, hi. Good to see you.”

“Yeah, good to see you, Erik,” said Raven with heavy sarcasm.

Charles gave her a warning look then looked up at Erik and smiled just slightly.

Erik’s heart caught. Time stretched out.

“Stop that,” Raven snapped. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you, Charles? Also, I’m _right here_. Erik, you want to know why we came?”

“Yeah,” said Erik, though he was fairly sure he didn’t.

“We came because Charles wants to be a self-sacrificing masochistic moron, and I want to yell at you for being a total jerk. But since you can’t seem to concentrate on anything but staring into each other’s eyes, the first thing you’re going to do is sit down. At least, like, six feet apart.”

“Okay,” Erik said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to ask what had been said, why Charles was feeling self-sacrificing, so he sat on the floor. There was just about room, with Charles leaning against the bed, Erik against the wardrobe and Raven claiming the beanbag.

“So why we’re here…” Raven began.

Charles sighed. “Raven, I’ll say it. I’m perfectly capable of speaking for myself.”

“You aren’t. You’ll say something sweet that he doesn’t deserve.”

That, Erik thought, was almost certainly true.

“Raven, this is my problem.” Charles sighed. “Look, Erik, I told Raven about the chess thing and how nice it was of you to come with me, and...”

“And I said I couldn’t stand to see him getting so happy about a two-faced phoney,” Raven interrupted.

Erik’s hands clenched. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Raven, be quiet,” said Charles. “Look, Erik, she told me some of the things you’ve been saying about me and some of the things other people have been saying. About, you know, fucking around and all that sort of thing. And, well, I didn’t want to believe it, but on reflection, I kind of do.”

Erik felt the edges of his world begin to crumble. He gripped his knees and swallowed. “Oh.” There were no words for how shitty he felt, physically sick. He couldn’t think of a single other thing to say, except, _are you breaking up with me?_

“Yeah, ‘ _oh_ ,’” said Raven, giving him the death glare again. He wanted to hate her but he couldn’t, because it had been the right thing to do. She was the only person who’d treated Charles right.

“And she’s kind of upset about it,” Charles continued, “and honestly so am I, a bit. Maybe a lot, later, but for now just a bit.”

“Seriously, Lehnsherr, you don’t deserve him. You don’t even know how lucky you could have it,” Raven snapped.

He did. He knew how lucky he’d be, if he could really have Charles. But there was no luck anywhere in this. He didn’t ask to fall for a human and have his life turned upside down. He didn’t ask to be torn away from his loyalties and forget his identity. He never asked for Charles, it had just… happened.

“Look, if I really thought you don’t give a shit, and you meant all those things, I’d be off crying in a corner somewhere,” said Charles. He met Erik’s eyes cautiously. “But these past couple of weeks have been lovely. I don’t believe you’re just trying to get into my pants. In fact, if anything, I’ve been trying to get into yours. (Sorry Raven, you didn’t need to hear that.) And if it’s all been real then you’re just saying it for your friends. Well, I don’t understand but I really like you and I think you like me, so you deserve a chance to explain.”

Seriously, who _was_ Charles? Who could possibly think like that? It made so little sense that Erik forgot about lying or even apologising. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” he said. “I don’t deserve that at all.”

Charles shrugged and jerked his head at Raven. “That’s what she said. She says I’m being really stupid. But I – well, I know you, or I think I do, and I suppose I can’t help but think the best of you. I just want to know… what’s so important that you have to hide? Is this what American high schools are like, with these utterly impenetrable barriers? I mean, I’ve seen it on telly, but I never actually believed it.”

“Mutants stay with mutants,” said Erik helplessly. “You’re a mutant or you aren’t, that’s the thing. That’s the only reason, Charles. I… I like you. I do. It’s just complicated.”

“It matters that much?” Charles asked.

“It’s just…” he didn’t know how to explain. “It’s just a thing. We don’t sit with the humans, like the geeks don’t sit with the jocks.” It was nothing like that at all, but it was the closest he could come.

“But why?” Charles pressed. “I mean, I understand that somehow there are all these divisions and posturing, and they’re taken seriously, but this seems a bit extreme.”

“We’re different from everyone else.”

“Better than everybody else, you mean,” Raven said sourly. “Like jocks think they’re better just because they play some stupid sport.”

“Fuck off, I didn’t say anything about being better.”

Charles looked at him searchingly. “No, you didn’t,” he said slowly. “But your mother was really surprised when she found out I was human.”

“So?” said Erik, scowling. “I'm a mutant. Most of my friends are mutants. That’s normal.”

Charles shook his head. “All of your friends are mutants.” His face stiffened with dawning comprehension. “Look, I know your friends don’t like me for being a human, but it’s not just about keeping up your reputation with them, is it? Do you believe it too? Do you honestly think mutants are better than humans?” His eyes shuttered themselves, as though something intrinsic had changed between them. “Do you think I’m worth less than you?”

Erik shivered. He wanted to put it right, but somehow when Charles said the word _humans_ he could practically feel Stryker’s hot breath on the back of his neck, could hear Seb’s voice whispering about power and fear.

“Well look at us,” he said. “We’re stronger, we can do things humans can’t. Doesn’t that mean we’re better? We’re the next step on the evolutionary ladder. I’m just being realistic.”

“The master race,” said Charles. “You can’t be serious.” His voice tensed and Erik realised that he’d never seen Charles angry, he couldn’t even imagine what it might look like, but he might be about to find out.

“So what if I am,” he snapped. “What’s so wrong with thinking we’re more evolved than humans? It’s better than thinking of ourselves as dangerous animals, or lab rats, or weapons.”

“Can’t you just think of yourselves as people?”

“We can’t afford to,” Erik said. He knew he was right, he could make Charles understand, he just had to explain it properly. Raven was glancing from one to the other of them, uncertainly, and she needed to understand too, it was important. “We’re not just people, you humans don’t think of us as people. Look, we’re not even the same species anymore, We can’t all just be friends forever. You’re the geneticist, survival of the fittest, right?”

“Fittest doesn’t have to mean strongest,” said Charles fiercely. “We may be genetically different but we’re all still civilised beings.”

Erik gritted his teeth. _“Well, what happens to you if you get too strong?”_ said Seb in his ear. “Civilised. Are you really that stupid? You’re the uncivilised ones, not us.”

“I’m not the one who won’t sit with the unevolved masses. I’m not the one who’s been going around lying about his relationships. I’d say that makes me a damn sight more civilised than you.”

“Fuck you,” Erik snapped. “You’re a human, you’ll never understand. You’re so self-righteous but you already think that you’re better than us, all of you. You were here first so you think you’re allowed to do what you like to us. You think we belong to you.”

“What are we doing, then?” Charles yelled. “What’s so terrible?”

Erik could feel his control slipping. He didn’t mean to shout, he wasn’t really shouting at _Charles_ , but Charles was a human just like the rest. “You take our blood,” he snarled, and heard his voice shuddering with violence that set his collection of metal fragments trembling. “If you humans are so fucking civilised then tell me why you want our blood!”

There was a silence. Charles looked at him, startled, uncertain. “Erik…?”

Erik gulped in a breath. He was panting, shocked at himself for saying it, for voicing the worry that had been bubbling under the surface. Suddenly was far more real, a proper fear gripping him by the throat. “What do they need it for. Why do they keep watching and testing? What are they going to do to us?” He needed to breathe. He focused furiously on the carpet, the wardrobe door against his back, the metal in the room.

“Erik, it’s alright,” said Charles. He edged across the floor and rested his hand gently on Erik’s knee as though he was soothing a frightened animal. Exactly like that. Soothing the edgy, dangerous animal so that it wouldn’t bite.

Erik still couldn't breathe. “Better doesn’t mean better,” he gasped. “It means we’re more of a threat to you.”

“Erik,” Raven whispered. “Jesus.” She was gripping the inside of her elbow, as though she was pressing down on the cotton wool after a needle stick. She probably wasn’t even aware that she was doing it. It made him want to tear Stryker’s arms off.

“It’s alright,” Charles said again, still with that wary, too-gentle tone.

Finally the air started flowing properly through Erik’s lungs. He tried to give Charles a smile to prove he wasn’t really insane. He didn’t quite manage it but it was enough reassurance for Charles to slide into his lap and wrap both arms around him.

As he felt some of the tension ease from his body he wished he could backtrack, tell Charles, tell _Raven_ , that he was exaggerating, it wasn’t a big deal, there was nothing for her to be scared of. But she was probably scared already. She probably had been since she first started wondering what the tests were really for.

Charles was warm and comforting and Erik held on. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he whispers, “Charles, I’m so sorry, I’ve been a jerk, I knew all the time I was being a jerk, but I didn’t know what else to do. It's totally fucked up.”

Charles let out a breath against his neck, almost a laugh. “It’s okay,” he said. “You know I said you deserved a chance to explain yourself? Well I think you managed it. God, Erik, what a mess.”

“Yeah,” Erik muttered. He glanced up at Raven. She looked hunched and slightly blurred round the edges of her form, but she recovered quickly, pulled herself together and realigned her forthright persona.

“Look, humans are scary, and they're scared of us,” she said, a little uncertainly, “I get that. But that's got nothing to do with Charles.”

“I know,” Erik said. Charles couldn’t have been less scary right then, all warm and gentle and loving.

“So, does this mean you’re going to keep on being a jerk, or doesn’t it?” she asked. “Because… like, maybe we understand why you’ve been doing it, but the purpose here was kind of getting you to _stop_.”

“Raven, there’s a time and a place,” Charles protested.

Erik knew absolutely nothing had changed. He would still be dating a human, still be fraternising with the enemy, but somehow just saying it all out loud, knowing that Charles sort of understood, had made everything bearable. He hugged Charles a little tighter. “I’m done being a jerk,” he said. The decision was made. It was such an astonishing relief.

“Oh,” said Charles, blinking up at him. “Oh! Do you mean we are dating now? Because in case I didn’t make it clear you’re totally forgiven and I’d really like it, and I’m surprised you’re okay with it but I’m not going to complain, and…”

“Thank god,” said Raven. “Charles, stop babbling. Erik, I might forgive you too because I’m getting kind of sick of hating you. Now I’m going to go talk to your mom while you guys make up or make out or whatever.”

“Please don’t talk to my mom,” said Erik, well aware that Raven would take malicious pleasure in spreading any embarrassing stories she could get all over the school. But to catch Raven he would have to tip Charles out of his lap, and he wasn’t planning on doing that for a while. Besides, she was already out of the room.

Kissing Charles without the weight of deceit on his shoulders was simple and wonderful. “You’re beautiful,” Erik said, lips moving against soft skin. “And crazy. You know if we do this for real we’ll have Riptide and Azazel and Emma out for our blood, right?”

“You can keep them in line,” said Charles. “In fact you’ll have to because I reserve the right to run like buggery whenever they come near us.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Erik, “I’ll take responsibility for Emma. But if my mom gives Raven any baby pictures it’s your job to get them back and burn them.”

“Even if they’re cute?”

“They won’t be,” said Erik with certainty. “They will be the most humiliating ones Mom can lay her hands on. You met her, right? She's always like that.”

He leaned in for another kiss, but Charles pulled away, laughing. “So, um, by the way,” he said, snagging something from the floor by Erik’s knee, “I found this on the bed. I like it. I want it. Can I keep it?”

He opened his hand. He was holding the knight, still encased in its iron armour.

“That’s part of my chess set,” Erik objected.

Charles smiled sunnily. “Obviously. Can I keep it?”

“Yes,” said Erik. “Of course you can.”

Charles hummed with satisfaction and leaned back in for the kiss.

*******

Once again, the school was bristling with pointing fingers.

“You’re freaking out,” said Erik. “Don’t freak out, it’s okay.”

“Everybody’s looking at us,” Charles muttered. “Every single person in this hallway is looking at us.”

Everybody in the previous hallway had been looking at them too. In fact, they’d collected quite a following. That was what happened when a staunchly pro-mutant hard-case presented a sweetly nerdish intellectual human with a red rose on the front steps of the school.

Charles, on realising what was happening, had collapsed against Erik’s chest in a fit of helpless giggles, but when Erik had detached him he’d taken the flower and smiled and smiled.

He was still smiling but it was half-hidden behind a look of nervous awe at the stir they were causing.

“Why shouldn’t they look?” said Erik. “You’re totally worth looking at.” He unslung his arm from around Charles’s shoulders and tilted his chin up with one hand. “Very pretty. I think I’ll keep you.”

The audience approved. The hubbub of voices increased as people craned to see, intermingled with a couple of whistles. “Kiss him!” called a girl from the sidelines, to a general ripple of assent from most of the female student body.

Erik grinned and looked speculatively at Charles, who leaned back hastily.

“Don’t you dare, Erik.”

“What are you going to do about it?” said Erik, smugly aware that Charles wouldn’t do anything except kiss back enthusiastically.

Charles did his patented dazed blink thing, then recovered, laughed and pulled away.

“No, sorry, you’re not that irresistible, and we’re not a circus side show.” He tucked himself back under Erik’s arm and nudged them both into motion.

There was a disappointed little chorus of ‘aw’s. Then, all of a sudden, everyone went quiet. Erik spun round to find Azazel, Riptide and Havok walking towards him.

Right, he thought. Time for the ‘Don’t fuck with my boyfriend, bitches,’ speech.

It was pretty good. He’d practised it in front of the mirror for an hour the previous night.

The guys stood in a line across the corridor. Azazel’s tail was flicking, and a little gust of wind set their hair and clothes fluttering.

“Erik,” Azazel said coldly.

“Erik,” said Riptide, scowling.

“Hey, Erik,” said Havok. “Dude, I totally dented my dad’s car. Can you help me out?”

Azazel swivelled round to glare at him. “Jesus Christ, Havok, do you pay any attention to anything at all?”

“What?” said Havok. “Look, this is serious.”

Erik stared at him, then shoved Charles forwards. “Hey, you’ve met my boyfriend, right?”

Charles gave a little wave.

“Oh, yeah, hey,” said Havok. “Listen, it’s the tiniest little dent, okay? It hardly even exists. But, like today, before I get grounded for a million years.”

Erik found himself sharing a despairing glance with Azazel. Their showdown was ruined. Then he met Riptide’s furious eyes and realised that with him, at least, there was going to be another one. Wind whipped down the corridor again, fast and violent, knocking Charles half off his feet. Erik pulled him back and clamped him against his side.

“Fuck you, Erik,” Riptide said. “That’s it, we’re done.” He turned and walked away, the breeze following loyally at his heels.

Havok frowned. “What was that about?”

“Erik’s. Dating. A. Human,” Azazel explained.

“Yeah, I know,” said Havok. “Look, Erik, uncool, but I really need your help with this car.”

Charles was suddenly shaking against Erik’s side, and it took Erik a second to realise that he was trying to smother another giggling fit. Erik elbowed him in the ribs. Charles made a tiny choking noise and subsided.

“Christ,” said Azazel to the world in general. “I’m surrounded by lunatics. Erik’s love-struck, Riptide’s homicidal, Havok’s a moron and the girls won't stop fucking laughing. I think the human boy-toy with the vivisection fantasies is the sanest one around.”

Charles gave him a sympathetic look. “You know, I kind of think I’m the sanest one around too.”


	2. Changing times

It was actually surprisingly nice, having a human boyfriend. Suddenly there seemed to be a whole lot more people around.

Erik was already friends with the football players, of course – he’d been the captain since junior year, and they hung around on the edges of the mutant crowd whenever he let them. He knew the cheerleaders and the other notable figures, the kids who threw good parties, his lab partners. He really couldn’t have got through high school only talking to six other people in his year. None of them were important though. They were just faces in the crowd.

But the Charles loved people. He was honestly interested in anyone who was willing to talk to him. He smiled and made friends, and while Erik was tempted to glower at the human hangers-on until they realised their unworthiness and went away, he couldn’t do that in front of Charles. It would have made him sad.

People he’d been vaguely aware of for years started nodding at him in the corridors. Everyone suddenly thought he was approachable. He got asked to help with things. One day after track practice the most clean-cut, all American guy on the team even took him aside and, earnestly, explained that he was gay and he wanted some advice on coming out to his rather straight-laced parents. “Charles said I should talk to you,” he said.

“Why did you tell him that?” Erik asked Charles afterwards.

“Hmm?” said Charles. He was lying on his stomach on a desk, feet kicked up in the air, chewing on the end of his ballpoint pen and frowning over his French homework. “Help me, I’m stuck. How do I say “my boyfriend is very handsome”?”

Erik snatched the book away. “What the hell are you writing about?” He scanned down the page. It was a variation on the theme of _What I did at the weekend_ , the scanty sentences padded out with several cartoon drawings of the two of them at the movie theatre, at the fairground and at the ice rink. “Charles, this never happened.”

“They’re the words I know,” Charles protested. “You try writing, ‘I watched a mutant shooting laser beams at a metal ball in a quarry.’”

“You’ve drawn little hearts,” groaned Erik.

Charles nodded. “Madame Dubois thinks we’re sweet. I’m hoping it’ll get me a better grade than my French actually deserves.”

Erik had to admit that he needed all the help he could get. “Remind me how you’re supposed to be a genius?” he said, handing back the book. “I bet you faked your degrees. Okay, I won’t tear up your cartoons if you answer my question. Why did you tell him to talk to me?”

“You mean Steve?” said Charles. “I didn’t tell him to talk to you, I told him it would be _okay_ to talk to you, when he asked. He’s been considering it for weeks.”

“He has? Why?”

Charles swung his legs round and sat up. “Why? Don’t be silly, Erik. You’re gay, you’re his team captain, you’ve been out for ages. Why wouldn’t he want to talk to you? I hope you were nice to him.”

“Yeah, I was nice to him,” said Erik. He had been, once he’d got over the genuinely baffling concept that he was some kind of agony aunt. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to him? Oh, shut up,” he added, as Charles raised an eyebrow. “Humans are nice, friendly creatures with no evil schemes to annihilate my kind. Sure.”

Charles shrugged. “I can’t speak for the whole of humanity, but I’m pretty sure Steve doesn’t have any evil schemes. I like him.”

Charles liked everyone. It was detrimental to Erik’s comfort.

As it turned out, most of the mutants liked Charles in return. Azazel still eyed him with suspicion but Havok was utterly unconcerned and Jubilee and Angel condescendingly decided that he was adorable. Even Emma was being subtle in her cruelty, though she gave the impression that, although she was only batting at Charles with her paws, the claws could come out at any second.

Riptide took every opportunity to jostle him in the halls and make threatening comments. The dreadful thing was that Charles actually managed to like him too, in his bizarrely empathetic way. He didn’t mind. He understood.

Erik didn't let it stop him from punching Riptide repeatedly in the face. Charles seemed to understand that too.

All in all, Charles became swiftly assimilated into the mutant group.

But then there was Steve. That, thinking back, was the first proper crack in their defences.

It only really occurred to Erik what had happened the first decently warm weekend of spring, when they had congregated in the park for hotdogs and chilling out. The girls were there too, having spotted them after a shopping trip and decided they were also in need of sustenance, and were sitting with Charles in a neat circle under a tree, gathered around a sketch pad. The rest of them were sprawled in the sun.

“Okay, so how about this?” said Mary Jane, flicking a page and shoving the book at Angel. “Sort of 1940s style, you know?”

Emma raised an eyebrow, but her expression could almost have been construed as approval. “It would be an improvement on last year, Angel darling,” she said. “I was ready to disown you after that travesty with the fishnets.”

Angel regarded it suspiciously. “I don’t think I do 1940s.”

“You could,” Mary Jane told her, “if you didn’t feel the need to show every inch of skin. Anyway, that’s one of Jan’s designs, I prefer this. Slinky, right? That’s more you.”

“I think so,” said Charles, peering over her shoulder. “You’d look lovely in that, Angel.”

Charles looked altogether too interested.

“Come back over here,” Erik ordered, patting the patch of grass beside him. “I can handle the genetics obsession, but if you’re going to get into fashion then we’re through.”

“Tell me about it,” Peter moaned. “I have to deal with it every single day.”

Peter. Mary Jane. _Humans_. How had it become normal?

There was a sudden bamf of red. Azazel fell out of the air accompanied by Steve, who was hauling him in by the tail. They sprang apart and Steve grinned.

“See? You don’t keep control of it so it’s really easy to grab. But show me that move with the flip, will you?”

Azazel scowled. “Erik, since when is Steve-the-quarterback a black belt in everything?”

“Since always,” said Steve.

Azazel flicked away and reappeared behind him. Steve spun and grabbed him in a neat lock.

“Predictable. You know, you telegraph your teleportation like crazy. But we can work on it,” he said, and they vanished again.

A few feet away, Tony was marking out the positions of super-lethal-mutant-ball with twigs and leaves. “I’d be pretty useful here,” he said to Havok, “and you need another player. I can build my own laser. Plus plenty of padding, and maybe a skateboard or something, it’d be fair.”

“Cool with me, man, so long as you don’t mind us killing you,” said Havok. “Hey, Erik, Tony’s gonna play ball with us next time we hit the quarry.”

“If you’re letting him play you have to let me play,” demanded Raven. “I can’t make a laser but I can break your arm with my toes.”

“Whatever, you can both play,” said Erik. It was a lost cause. Steve’s slutty not-quite-boyfriend had a death wish. Havok loved him. He’d found a kindred spirit.

Erik flopped on his back on the grass and pulled Charles on top of him, kisses him and smacked him gently on the nose. “Look at them all. What have you done?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” said Charles, with perfect innocence.

It was almost believable. Almost.

It had happened very gradually. First there was Steve, because Erik couldn’t avoid it, not without Charles pouting him to death. Then two of the school’s major science nerds, Peter Parker and Henry Pym, had got into an argument over a paper and started following Charles around presenting their opposing theses for his consideration, with Hank McCoy trailing admiringly at their heels.

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t get rid of them,” Charles had complained. “No, don’t growl at them Erik, that’s not nice. Just let them stay.”

Both of them, implausibly, had gorgeous girlfriends who were fashion-mad. After due consideration, Emma had implacably drafted them in to create a prom dress for Angel and, as she had put it, “drag Jubilee out of the 80s.” They had seemed quite willing to be slaves so long as they were allowed creative freedom.

And soon enough there was Tony, and then his friend Pepper, who had apparently always had a bit of a thing for Azazel. That was going too far for Emma, who had firmly vetoed the possibility. “Think of the children,” she’d pointed out. “Red skin and orange hair would look _vile_ together.”

Then she and Azazel had caught and held each other’s gazes for a little too long.

Whatever’s going on, there was no point in complaining. The humans just appeared. And they brought their friends.

Every individual step seemed accidental, but Erik got the distinct, unsettling impression that, all this time, Charles had been very gently manipulating them towards integration.

He was a sneaky little bastard, behind those big blue eyes.

 

***

 

It was Thursday and Erik had only just got home after school when his phone rang.

“Charles,” he said, sticking it on speakerphone, “I saw you fifteen minutes ago.”

“I know. I missed you,” said Charles.

“You’re sickening,” Erik told him. “What do you want?”

Charles laughed. “Can’t we do the ‘I missed you too, precious…’ ‘Well I missed you more…’ thing? I’ve never done that with anybody.”

_Good_ , Erik thought. If Charles had cooed saccharine nonsense at anybody else he might have had to hunt them down and kill them.

“Anyway,” Charles continued, “Tony’s having a party on Saturday. Are you going to go? More importantly, are you going to parade me in on your arm like the gorgeous trophy boyfriend I am?”

“If you like,” said Erik. He’d been going to Tony’s parties since before he even knew who Tony was. They were legendary. “I’ll parade you if you wear a little sparky tiara and look up at me adoringly.”

“I always look up at you adoringly,” said Charles. “Well, I always look up at you, at least. And I’ll wear my jeans, in lieu of the tiara.”

Erik’s smile widened. “You do that,” he said.

They were pretty much the exact jeans he’d dressed Charles in in his male model fantasy, ages ago. How long had it been, two months? Yes, he’d been tested once since, the usual creepiness magnified by Stryker’s promised extra cronies looking on, and his next date was looming.

Not nice thoughts. He redirected his mind firmly to the jeans. They were incredibly slutty. He was very fond of them, though he knew Emma had picked them out because she liked to see him standing mesmerized in the middle of the street watching his boyfriend’s ass.

Her twisted sense of humour did have its uses.

“What are you doing now?” asked Charles.

“I’m about to go running,” said Erik, fumbling in a drawer for some sweats. “I’m getting changed.”

“ _Are_ you?” said Charles. “Okay, you go right ahead and I’ll imagine it. Take off your shirt.”

His voice was so full of fond, easy lust that Erik had to laugh.

“We’re not doing this.”

“No, we really are.”

“The cold shower is supposed to come after the run. Wait until I get back.”

He could almost hear Charles’s pout of annoyance.

“I hate waiting.”

“Why do I put up with you? You drag me to chess club, you force me to help with your ridiculous science projects, and now you’re ordering me to take my shirt off.”

“You’re going to take it off anyway,” Charles pointed out. “Besides, you had fun at chess club today. You won.”

Erik frowned at the phone. “It was a stalemate.”

“Well, yes, but I’m empirically a better player than you, so in a sense you won. Are you taking your shirt off yet?”

“Yes.” Erik pulled it over his head. “But in a very unsexy way.”

“The way I’m imagining it is sexy,” said Charles. He made a happy little noise and Erik got a sudden flash of what he might be doing, sprawled on his back on the bed, biting his lip, hand sliding downwards.

It was a struggle, but he didn’t give in. “Stop it,” he said. “I’m going running. If you’re going to distract me I’m hanging up now and I won’t call you back after.”

“Mean,” said Charles. “Alright, cast me aside in favour of your stupid exercise regime. Have a nice time. I’ll just be lying here. Amusing myself.”

“I hate you,” said Erik.

The pounding of his feet on the road managed to blank the image out of his mind. He couldn’t get rid of Charles entirely though. At unexpected moments Charles would sidle into his thoughts with his glowing smile, pressing up against him, warm and pliable or grabby and wanting, or looking uncertainly at Emma or Riptide and shrinking slightly but instinctively back towards Erik. Erik loved that. He loved that feeling.

But there was the other Charles too, the one who argued with Peter, all quick hand-gestures and unconscious authority, or grinned over the chessboard with shrewd triumph and said, “Mate in four.” The elusive Charles who watched and planed and lied with innocent eyes, the person whose tiny actions shifted the whole world to where he wanted it to be.

That wasn’t the person Erik knew. Sometimes he wished that facet of Charles didn’t exist.

The bubble of thought popped abruptly. He pulled up, panting, angry at himself. He didn’t think that. That would be a terrible thing to think.

He told himself that he was just pissed off about the chess game. Pathetic but true. Still, the thought left a strange taste in his mouth and he felt guilty about it for the rest of his run. When he got in he went straight upstairs, showered quickly, and flopped down on his bed without calling Charles back.

 

***

 

He was still lying there, staring up at the ceiling and mulling over his own character flaws when his mother walked in, straight into the room without knocking.

He yelped automatically. “Mom! I could have been naked,” he complained. If he’d called Charles back he could have been doing something a lot worse.

“You think I care about seeing you naked?” she said. It was the kind of thing she always said, but she sounded strange. He looked at her more closely. There was something strange about her face.

“Mom?”

“Oh, Erik,” she said.

He hadn’t heard that tone in her voice before. He didn’t want to be hearing it at all.

“What?” he said, sitting up. “What’s wrong?” He couldn’t work out her expression. She looked tired, but it was more than that.

She sat down on the bed next to him, as though her legs had given out. “Where’s the remote? Put on the news.”

“What’s happened?”

He let his mind reach out for the familiar wiring, found the remote in the middle of a nest of blankets. His little TV sizzled into life, showing a breaking news report, all shaky camerawork and flashing lights, police and ambulances on the scene, people crying. Kids crying, mostly.

_“The death toll is now estimated to be seventeen,”_ the voiceover was saying. _“California state and federal authorities say that no effort will be spared to catch the killer.”_

Jesus, he thought, not another school shooting. They’d only just had one somewhere out there in California.

And then, slowly, his brain registered the headline that his eyes hadn’t wanted to see.

_Mutant Teen in High School Massacre_

_“And for those of you who’ve just joined us, we’re reporting live from St Mark’s High School in Southern California, where an as-yet-unnamed mutant has carried out a horrific attack on fellow students.”_

The camera cut to a school building. There were scorch marks on the walls, nothing that could have been made by a gun. Erik knew what they were, had seen them before in the quarry, whenever Havok loosed off his laser beams too hard during a ball game. His blasts left lesser ghosts of those same marks, little oblong blossoms of black and grey.

That was what they would look like at full strength, on paint and brick.

_“Eyewitnesses report that the mutant first attacked his teacher using a bolt of energy, then turned his powers on his classmates.”_

His mom dragged her eyes from the screen and looked over at him. “Oh, those poor children, their poor parents,” she said, and he knew she was imaging how she would feel. She was seeing him as one of the victims.

That wasn’t what everyone else would see.

In that moment he didn’t care about the dead kids, not because he was heartless, but because he was frightened. The mutant, the announcer had said, as though that was all that kid was, not a troubled teen or even a crazed killer, just a mutant. It shouldn’t have been about mutants. Human kids did that kind of thing too. It was fucked up, but it happened. Surely they knew that.

So why was the voiceover woman saying the word every three seconds?

_“It’s thought that the mutant who committed these acts was helped to escape the scene by another mutant with the ability to walk through walls. Both are still at large and considered to be extremely dangerous.”_

He couldn’t take his eyes off the images. The news channel wasn’t showing anything graphic, just scorch marks and sobbing. He wondered what he wasn’t seeing. He wondered what those blasts could do.

The voiceover was too loud in his ears, so loud he could barely understand it. There were footsteps on the stairs and then Erik’s dad was in the room too. He didn’t say anything, just stood by the wall, a steady, calming presence.

It wasn’t the announcer talking anymore. The screen was filled with a crowd of onlookers, all of them white and shocked, but one man was talking into an interviewer’s microphone, saying the inevitable angry words that were always going to be said: _“How can we let these people go to school with our children?”_

“Fuck.”

Erik had to swallow; his voice wasn’t coming out the way it should have. His mother took his hand and squeezed. It was no comfort but he let her. Perhaps it would make her feel better. She’d known this would happen, he realised. His parents had both been waiting for something like this to happen.

His dad was looking straight at him, sad and direct. “Things are about to get tough, kiddo,” he said.

A shudder ran down Erik’s spine, not shock or fear this time. Anger. Fucking stupid world full of stupid people. His metal scraps started tapping and clicking against each other in their boxes, then seething more violently. The screws shifted in the furniture and light fittings. He grabbed for a chunk of iron and wrapped his hand around it to feel it as it distorted and twisted. It was enough to still the rest.

His parents were both looking at him, but he couldn’t look back, not after that little display of power. What if he saw fear in their eyes too?

“Turn it off,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

When they were gone he lay back down and closed his eyes, but those scorch marks were burned into his retinas.

His phone started to ring, on and on. He ignored it.

After a while it beeped with a text message.

_I’m worried about you. Call me. C._

He didn’t call.

 

***

 

When the phone next rang it wasn’t Charles; it was Emma.

He picked up, with a toneless, “Hello.”

“Erik,” she said. Then there was a pause when neither of them could think of anything to say. It was the first time he’d ever known her to be at a loss.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’m having a lovely time listening to my neighbours thinking, ‘I can’t believe we live next door to one of those _things_.’ And then they belatedly worry that I can hear.” She laughed, but it jangled off key. “I’ve a mind to tell them that I can.”

“Don’t.” He felt sick for her. At least he didn’t have to watch first hand as People’s thoughts turned against him.

“No, Erik, I’m not entirely stupid.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, a little awkwardly because it was Emma. Emma was always okay.

She sighed. “I’m trying not to listen, if you know what I mean. It’s hard. I keep wanting to check back every five minutes to see if they’ve come to their senses.”

He struggled for something comforting to say. “They’ll forget it. It’ll blow over. It’s just some fucked-up teenagers doing fucked-up things half a continent away.”

“Don’t delude yourself more than you must, Erik. That’s bullshit. Mutant-human relations have been on the edge of going to hell for too long. Every time one of us commits a crime it’s a big deal, but this is different. They’ve always been scared of us and now they’ve got an excuse to start doing something about it. Have you checked the news lately?”

His parents were watching it downstairs, but all he could hear was a muffled mutter of voices.

“I don’t want to know.”

She laughed again. “Pulling the covers over our head, are we? That’s practical. Well it’s not all bad, there are plenty of people trying to convince the general public not to string us up from trees. The rest is all legislation, legislation, legislation. Should the rules be tighter, should we all be psychoanalysed, should mutants with dangerous powers be kept away from the general population? They want things to change and I don’t think it’s just talk. They really don’t like us.”

There wasn’t much to say to that. “Well they can go fuck themselves,” wouldn’t work. Neither would, “What are they going to do about it?” Briefly Erik considered, “We’ll have to wait and see,” or even, “They’re not all bad.”

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” he said instead.

“In the long term, quite possibly. And in the short term, school tomorrow is going to be interesting,” said Emma. “I doubt we’ll have many fans just now. Oh, I’m not talking about your blue-eyed boy, he’s as loyal as a puppy. At least that’s one who understands.”

“He doesn’t understand,” Erik snapped. “How could he understand? He’s just another human in the end.”

There was another long pause, so long that it started to get uncomfortable. To fill the silence, he asked, “Have they caught the kids who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Have they or haven’t they? They’d report it if they had.”

“They’re not saying. That’s why I called in the first place.”

He wished she hadn’t bothered. It was one of the most depressing conversations he’d ever had.

“Called to tell me nothing, you mean?”

“Erik, I thought you’d have seen it.”

“Seen what? Jesus, Em, get to the point.”

She paused again, then said carefully, “They reported that some kind of agency had the situation under control. And they had a spokesperson, giving no details at all.”

“So?”

“So it was your Doctor Stryker.”

It took a second to process the words. When he had, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’d been stewing in imagined horrors for hours, and he barely had enough emotion left to be shocked. Stryker the boogieman fit right in amongst all the rest, with barely a ripple.

“Are you sure?” he said. Once again, he felt that fetid breath and those clammy hands. Was it too much to hope that the two fucked-up kids would kill him?

Emma gave an annoyed little sniff. “Oh for god’s sake, Erik, of course I’m sure. For a start, his name was on the screen.” She was starting to sound waspish, more irritated with him than with the world in general. “Besides, I know him perfectly well. He’s been here for my tests once or twice. He doesn’t just come for you and Seb.”

It was true that Stryker seemed to be interested all the strong ones. Although Emma preferred to rely on her beauty, brains and bitchiness, she was no slouch as a telepath.

“Have you tried to get a read on him?”

There was a wry edge to her voice as she answered. “Only once. But he wasn’t thinking about his plans for mutant extermination, believe me. I won’t be wearing a short skirt to my tests again.”

Eugh. Erik shivered. “So what if it is him?” he asked. “What does it mean?”

“You’re being purposefully dense, aren’t you?” she said, and hung up on him in a huff.

 

***

 

They congregated in the car park before school. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. By the time Erik got there all the seniors except Jubilee and Azazel had gathered. They arrived not long after he did. The juniors were in a huddle nearby and the younger kids were hanging around uncertainly in the background, not sure if they were welcome but unwilling to face the hordes of humans alone.

People skirted around them at a distance.

The walk to the school buildings seemed very long. Erik was horribly aware of the tense, miserable group of mutants behind him and Emma. He was even more aware of her hand gripping his sleeve. People were staring and she was a bit too pale.

He wondered what she could hear.

The humans spread out away from them until there was a half-circle of them round the mutant groups. Nobody moved.

Sharks and Jets, Erik thought. Or it would be, if not for the fact that there were a thousand Jets to a handful of Sharks.

And the Sharks had the guns.

Then someone said his name. Light and easy and happy.

“Erik! Over here!”

Charles stepped forward out of the crowd, ran up to Erik and threw both arms around his neck. “Hey,” he said, as though it wasn’t a big deal, as though everyone wasn’t watching them _again_.

And a little stream of humans followed after him.

It was the ones Erik had come to think of as _their_ humans, the ones from the park and the chess club. But not just them; others too, twenty or more spilling out of the wall of frightened students and into the no-man’s-land.

Peter, Tony and Henry Pym clustered around Havok. That was important, Erik realised. The attacker had shared his power, so he was the one that needed the most public acceptance. _Charles, you fucking choreographer._

Steve was already clapping Azazel on the shoulder, drawing him off in a different direction. Others were being dragged gently towards the school or away down the steps. The defiant mutant huddle was being carefully teased apart.

Jan ran up to Emma brandishing a magazine, and the two of them broke off, chattering easily. _Darling,_ Emma said into his head, _if you don't kiss that boy I'll do it for you._ Her pallor was gone. Even he could feel the release of tension.

Other kids came up to mingle with the younger mutants, some that Charles had primed and some, judging from their uncertain expressions, just because it seemed to be what everyone else was doing.

_Get on with it_ , Emma commanded. _People are looking at you._

Erik bent his head to kiss Charles firmly, bruisingly, harder than he normally would, drawing out a moan of surprise and pleasure. It wasn’t a tender kiss, and he hadn’t intended to please. He nipped at Charles’s soft lip and imagined himself biting harder, hard enough to cause pain, because although he was grateful part of him was saying, _We could have handled this on our own. You don’t understand any of this. I don’t like being a pawn in your games._

Then he looked up over Charles’s shoulder. Riptide was standing there in the middle of the milling crowd, watching the two of them with an odd smile on his face. He could have joined any of the groups, they were certainly under orders to welcome him. But he didn’t. He glanced away from Erik, across the road.

Erik followed his eyes. There was someone there. His skin tingled all over. He knew that easy, strolling stride and the jaunty tilt of the head. He would have known that figure anywhere.

Seb. Fucking Sebastian Shaw.

He mentally said all the swear words he could think of. He hugged Charles for real, squeezing him tight for a moment, then pulled away and gripped him by the arms. “Go inside. Get to class.”

“Erik?” said Charles, looking bewildered.

“Go _on_ ,” said Erik. Seb was too close already. “I need to talk to someone. No, don’t look,” he snapped, as Charles instinctively started to glance around. “Just go.”

“But…”

“Now!”

“I… alright,” Charles said, still puzzled but trusting. “I’ll see you inside.” He brushed the back of his hand briefly down Erik’s cheek and started towards the school. The other groups converged on him, like rats following the Pied Piper. Soon it was down to a handful of students hanging around on the steps, and Riptide and Erik alone out in the open, watching the approaching figure.

“Seb Shaw’s a psycho, Rip,” said Erik, without flicking his gaze away for a second.

Rip snorted. “You’re the psycho, cosying up to the norms.”

“I’m not joking.”

He had said it so often that it had become a joke. Why don’t you hang out with Seb Shaw anymore? Oh, the guy’s a fucking psycho. But he’d never said what he really meant.

_He never let anything go unpunished. He had too many accidents with his powers. I stopped believing his excuses._

_He liked having power over me._

_When he touched me I felt ashamed._

He couldn’t say those things; they were the kind of things that weak, frightened people said. He’d never even let himself think them. He’d just cut Seb out of his life and laughed it off.

They’d wanted the same things, it had seemed, and they’d understood each other, and Erik had been swept up in it. But they hadn’t been the same at all. Erik hated humans, yes, he hated them the way the way humans hated mutants, the way anyone hated an uncertain threat.

Seb was different. Seb hated humans the way humans hated cockroaches.

And there he was, strolling up the steps, his hand outstretched to clasp Riptide on the shoulder, his smooth, not-quite-handsome face smiling the smile that just barely lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Hello,” he said. “If it isn’t my favourite little spoon-bender. How are your powers coming along, Erik?”

“How’s that your business?” said Erik, unsettled. It was a strange first question. Seb always managed to set him on the wrong foot.

Seb laughed. “Just curious. You see, I’m not sure you’re still a mutant at all. Do a trick for me. Or is humanity catching?”

“What do you want, Seb?”

Seb took a step forward and Erik instinctively drew back, then hated himself for it.

Seb’s lips twitched with satisfaction. “I want to know who you are. It’s time to choose, Erik, norms or mutants. But I saw your choice just now, didn’t I? So I want to hear it from your own mouth,” he said, still smooth and smiling. “Repeat after me: I, Erik Lehnsherr, am betraying my species to fuck an animal.”

Riptide sniggered.

Erik felt himself flush. “I don’t give a shit what you say about me,” he said. “If it’s a choice between norms and a sadistic freak like you, I choose the norms.” He willed his knees not to tremble, and told himself that he didn’t have to take Seb’s bullshit anymore. A flash of memory ran through his brain, hard fingers and cruel, mocking words.

Why had he put up with it for so long?

“My beautiful Erik,” Seb drawled, “lying down on the ground so the maggots can eat you alive. That’s what they’re doing, you know. And you’re letting it happen, because one of them’s starting his meal by sucking your cock.”

Erik’s hands clenched into fists. “You’re getting boring, Seb. Tell me what you want.”

Seb tossed back his head. For a moment he was almost beautiful, there on the steps, the way a rocky landscape is beautiful, hard-edged and majestic. He was the kind of person who was easy to believe in and easy to follow.

“I want you with me,” he said. For the first time there was real emotion in his voice. “It’s got to start, Erik, before they make their move. It’s got to start _now_. There are others out there. Mutants are pooling their strength. We can join them.”

“What do you mean, join them?”

“Go to them,” said Seb exultantly. “Leave here and start the fight.”

Riptide looked mesmerised.

“You’re crazy,” Erik said, and again, it wasn’t a joke. He forced a laugh. “Seb, for god’s sake, finish high school before you set off on your crusade.”

“First they came for the mutants,” said Seb, sing-song, “and I didn’t speak out because I was _in fucking high school,_ Erik? Is that how it’s going to be? You were always afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Erik. It was a lie in more ways than he could count.

“Then you’re weak,” Seb spat, his mask slipping for the briefest instant. “We were brothers. We are brothers. The brotherhood of mutants, we can make it real. What’s standing in your way? Because there’s one obstacle I’ll be happy to remove for you.”

Erik tensed. _Touch Charles and I’ll kill you_ , he thought, and he almost said it, but it would be a challenge Seb would certainly accept. “What are you going to do?” he asked instead. “Murder them all?”

“Murder?” Seb smiled his unsettling smile again. “Oh no, not murder. Genocide.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Erik despairingly. Most people’s psycho exes just posted dog shit through the letterbox. How come he got the one who wanted to exterminate the human race? “Look, I am not going off to join your mutant army. If you want to go, go. Send me a postcard.”

“Come with me, Erik,” Seb said again. “If you’re not with us, you’re with them. You can keep your little human, I don’t care who you fuck, but I won’t let him recruit to you fight on their side. I won’t let him convince you to betray us for some sugar-coated utopia that will never exist.”

His voice wavered, and Erik abruptly realised that he wasn’t just crazy; he was jealous. He was still furious at Erik for daring to leave, and he was jealous of Charles, who had won Erik over to his cause the way Seb never could. Or so Seb thought. He couldn’t know that Erik would prefer to have Charles to himself, just the two of them, no schemes, no politics, no outside world at all.

Right there, not five minutes earlier, Charles had put on his sweet little display of togetherness. He stood for everything Seb loathed, and he was human and he was _Erik’s_. He was just asking to be hurt.

“Go to hell, Seb. I don’t belong to you, you can’t tell me what I will or won’t do. Stay away from me.”

Seb’s eyes went hard but his voice was gentle, caressing. “You do belong to me. You always have, and if you don’t know it now you’re going to learn soon enough.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Erik. He raised a hand. The school railings bent and undulated in a glorious sine wave.

Seb raised his own hand and suddenly he was holding a seething ball of energy. “Oh yes,” he said, lovingly spinning the fireball, turning it around his wrist like a conjurer. “Aren’t you?”

_Would I win, if it came down to it?_ Erik wondered, and the answer popped into his mind, surprisingly easy. _Yes, if I got my chance. I think I would._

“Think about it, Erik,” said Seb. “But I don’t need to tell you that. I’m sure you will. Come on, Riptide, we have things to attend to.”

He spun and walked away. Erik snorted. Things to attend to. Who the hell did he think he was? Poser. Tosser.

Fuck.

He turned back towards the school. The place was deserted. Or not quite; there was a little dark haired girl sitting on her satchel, tucked away behind a low wall where she was hardly noticeable. She was chewing gum and twiddling her hair.

“Erik,” she said as he passed, scrambling to her feet.

It took a second to click. “Raven. What the hell are you doing?”

She was all big eyes. “Wow, Erik, seriously, that was fucked up. He didn’t actually mean all that stuff about genocide? I mean, killing everybody? That’s not real, right?”

She was almost smiling, almost amused at the craziness, not quite taking it seriously. She was so young, fifteen, or thereabouts, just a kid. Of course, at fifteen Seb had probably already been eviscerating bunnies,

“Of course he didn’t mean it,” said Erik, wishing with all his heart it was true. “It’s all this shit on TV. It’ll all go back to normal soon.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Raven, not looking entirely convinced. “But he was talking about Charles. When he said, ‘animal,’ and, ‘You can fuck your little human,’ and all that. If you let anything happen to him…” She sounded urgent and worried, though not, perhaps, quite as worried as he was.

“Nothing’s going to happen to Charles,” he snapped. “Jesus, Raven, I can handle Seb. Will you leave it alone?”

“You promise?” she asked, surprisingly small and quiet, for her. “Erik, he’s my best friend.”

“Mine too,” he said.

 

***

 

He was pretty used to being stared at by then, so he shoved the door to the classroom open without preamble and stepped in. Mrs Karnofsky, Charles’s history teacher, looked up with irritation.

“Yes, what do you want, Mr Lehnsherr?”

“Charles,” he said simply, and glanced around. Charles was at a desk by the window, looking up in surprise with his chewed ballpoint still held to his lips. Erik smiled. Charles hated history almost as much as French because he knew absolutely nothing about America. He had almost certainly been daydreaming his way through the lesson, doing distractingly erotic things to his pen while thinking about protein folding.

Charles saw the smile and offered a small, puzzled one of his own. Erik jerked his head meaningfully at the door, and Charles flicked his eyes back and forth from Erik to the teacher.

“Um,” he said, flushing slightly, “excuse me, please.”

Mrs Karmofsky began to protest, but Charles was already out of his seat and ducking out of the door under Erik’s arm. He tugged Erik a little way down the corridor.

“What is it?”

Erik scooped him into a hug.

Charles wriggled. “Wait, what? Erik! What are you doing?”

“Kissing you,” Erik explained. He pressed his lips to Charles’s cheek, then to his nose, then to his neck, and finally to his mouth, claiming him, promising himself that Seb was never, ever going to touch him.

“What is wrong with you - you can’t - pull me out of class - to make out,” Charles said, between kisses.

Erik shrugged. He couldn’t wait.

“Are you okay?” said Charles, slightly muffled. “No, I don’t need to ask, this is not you being okay. What happened out there?” He squirmed far enough out of Erik’s grasp to look up into his face.

“My psychotic ex-best-friend asked me to run away from home and join a brotherhood of mutants in the fight to exterminate the human race.”

It got him a baffled, blue-eyed blink. _“Seriously?”_ asked Charles, wavering between astonishment and incredulity.

“Yes, seriously.”

“What did you say?”

“What the hell do you think I said?”

Charles gave him an impish look. “Just checking. Okay, so that sucks. Bad day, huh?” he said, sliding one of his hands up Erik’s chest to rest just over his heart.

“Could have been much worse,” said Erik. Then, as he ought to have done ages ago, he added, “Thank you.”

Charles bridled with pleasure. “Oh, it was nothing,” he said, and Erik wished more than ever that he hadn’t done it. Part of him was still snarling, _‘Don’t try to control me_ ,’ but it was being drowned out by the much larger part begging, _‘Don’t get hurt. Don’t let me get you hurt.’_

And there was a part saying, _‘You’re near me and it feels good.’_

Erik pressed a kiss to the lobe of his ear and gave it a teasing flick with his tongue. Charles squirmed on cue.

“Stop it, I have to go back in,” he protested, but instead of pulling away he pressed closer, twisting his head to capture Erik’s mouth and licking his way inside.

Erik let himself sink into it for a minute, hands on the side of Charles’s face, fingertips tangling in his hair, then laughed and broke the kiss. “You still have no self-control,” he said.

“No,” Charles agreed sadly, catching his breath. He leaned his head against Erik’s shoulder. “Can we stay here another minute? This is nice. I don’t want to let go just yet.”

“Sure,” Erik murmured. He didn’t want to either.

It was actually closer to five minutes before they broke apart. Charles sighed and patted at his hair. “Duty calls. How dishevelled do I look?”

He certainly looked more rumpled than he had earlier.

“What does it matter?” said Erik. “Everyone knows what you’ve been doing.”

Charles went scarlet. “They do not. Do they? Oh, I suppose they do,” he admitted. He poked at Erik resentfully. “I’m going to get in trouble for walking out of class and I’m going to get laughed at the second I walk back in.”

“Your life is very hard,” Erik told him. “Go learn some history. Wait, quiz time, what year was the Declaration of Independence signed?”

Charles gave him a withering look. “Why on earth should I ever need to know that?”

“What day of the year?” said Erik, smiling down at him.

Charles looked bewildered. “If I don’t know the year, I’m hardly going to know the day.”

Erik burst out laughing. “Please, please go and tell your history teacher that,” he said. After one last kiss, he pushed Charles back towards the classroom, feeling a rush of absolute fondness. Despite Seb, despite everything, he felt so much better.

 

***

 

As they wriggled his bike onto the back seat of Erik’s car, Charles said, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. I could have been home by now.”

“Stop complaining,” Erik told him. “I’m giving you a ride home. It’s called being a good boyfriend.”

It was actually called being totally paranoid, but he wasn’t planning on mentioning that.

Charles looked doubtfully at the car. “I don’t think the door’s going to close,” he said, then quirked an eyebrow as Erik tossed a chunk of iron at it and welded everything together. “Oh. Well, I suppose that’s one solution.” He grinned. “At least you didn’t remodel the entire car. Can we go now?”

Over the course of the short drive Charles took his revenge for Erik’s high-handedness by dropping a hand on his knee and sliding it up, millimetre by millimetre, with little caressing touches to his inner thigh. Erik growled under his breath the whole way to the Xaviers’ ridiculously large house, and growled again when Charles hopped innocently out of the car and said, “Bike, please.”

_Sex, please, now, up against the gatepost,_ Erik thought. He unloaded the bike unwillingly, and hung on to it. “You’re just going to wheel this away and leave me like this, aren’t you?”

Charles made a face. “I’d have wheeled it off from _school_ if you’d let me, and then I wouldn’t have had to leave you like anything. Besides, you’re the one who has homework. You said it was important, so go do it.”

Erik was rapidly revising the importance of his homework. “I can spare you a few minutes.”

“Why, thank you,” said Charles politely, twinkling underneath his serious expression, “but I won’t trouble you.”

Erik scowled, exasperated. “Charles, just ask me in, will you? Besides, I’ve never even been in your house. That’s weird. Why do we always go to my place, anyway?”

“Your mum bakes cookies. And she’s nice to me. I think she prefers me to you.”

“Yeah, she does,” Erik admitted. His mother was entirely in love with Charles, who was apparently, _“Such a nice, polite boy, Erik, and I hope you behave that well when you’re outside this house because you sure as hell don’t when you’re in it.”_ She also enjoyed making them both blush on as many occasions as possible. “But we could come here sometimes, right?” he pointed out. “Why not?”

“It’s a horrible house, that’s all,” said Charles, scuffing at the ground with a toe. It was the moodiest Erik had ever heard him. “I prefer yours.”

“Looks okay to me,” said Erik, running his eyes over the opulent mansion. He gave Charles a grin, trying to lighten the mood. “What’s wrong with it? Is it built on a sacred burial ground or something? Do the walls bleed?”

Charles smiled and shrugged. “Alright, it’s not that bad. It’s just not very homey. Your house feels like a home.”

“You haven’t lived here long,” said Erik. He couldn’t imagine moving countries and leaving everything behind. “I guess it’s different to your home in England.”

“No, not especially,” said Charles, sounding blankly disinterested. For a moment it was as though he’d shrunk slightly and some of the light had gone out of him. Then his smile flipped back on. “That one didn’t have bleeding walls either. Or poltergeists, or skeletons in the closet. Very dull.”

“Tall towers and dragons?” asked Erik, taking up the familiar banter despite the curl of uncertainty in his stomach.

Charles looked relieved. “Well, obviously they both have those. You should get out your sword.”

Erik snorted with laughter. “Happy to.”

“Oops. How is it that our fairy tale references always end up sounding dirty?” Charles looked mischievous. “Oh brave sir knight,” he declaimed, stepping back to throw his arm out theatrically, “climb up my tower and unsheathe your great big sword!”

“Shut up,” said Erik, dropping the bike and reaching for him.

Charles darted away. “They’re all pretty suggestive when you think about it,” he called. “Oh dear, I’ve pricked myself with a prick. Better go to bed for a hundred years.”

Erik chased him. They both scampered across the lawn towards the house, but Erik’s longer legs made the difference. He cornered Charles by a bush.

“Enter my castle and awaken me with a kiss,” Charles gasped. “Erik, let go, I’m sorry!”

“You will be,” Erik growled into his ear. They toppled to the grass and for a moment everything was a tangle of limbs and laughter, until Erik got Charles pinned under him and leaned down to kiss him.

Charles jerked his head away. “Don’t.” He glanced hastily to one side, towards the house, to the dark windows. “Not here. Someone could see.” He twisted his wrists urgently. Erik let go and scrambled away. Charles sat up, lips pursed, looking awkwardly at the grass.

“What is this?” Erik asks. “Charles? What are you hiding from? Do your parents even know you’re gay?”

“Oh, yes,” said Charles, still not quite meeting Erik’s eyes. “Well, I’ve told them,” he amended, “though I’m not convinced they were listening. I suppose I’d just prefer it if I could be sure they aren’t here.” He gave a little shrug. “The thing is, my stepfather’s a bit of a difficult character, and if he sees us like this he’ll say something and then…” He trailed off.

“Then what?” demanded Erik. It was the first time Charles had even mentioned a stepfather. As Erik came to think about it, he realised Charles hadn’t said anything about his mother either.

“Then you’d probably hit him,” Charles said sheepishly.

Erik stared at him.

“I’d be all for it, in the abstract,” Charles assured him, “but it would complicate our afternoon a little bit.” He smiled and poked at Erik’s knee. “Can we just go inside? Then I can find out who’s here and let you do interesting things to me in comfort and privacy.”

Erik opened his mouth to say that they couldn’t go inside, not until Charles had explained what was going on and Erik had seen the stepfather and heard what he had to say and hit him several times and then possibly hit him several times more, but faced with that hopeful smile he felt himself deflate. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “But you should tell me about this shit, you know?”

There was resentment hovering under the automatic anger. Of course Charles should have told him.

Then again, he probably should have realised on his own.

He brooded on that as he followed Charles into the house at a respectable distance. He waited in the hall (with its sweeping marble staircase and chandelier) while Charles nipped into the kitchen for a hurried conversation with the housekeeper.

Charles emerged beaming. “All clear,” he said. “They’re not going to be back for hours. Something about a charity yacht trip.”

Erik made a little moaning noise. “Marble staircases and charity benefits. How come I even know you? Why don’t you go to a posh, expensive school?”

“What would be the point? I don’t want to make rich contacts and it’s not as though I’m there to learn.”

“God, Charles, you are so full of it,” Erik told him, bursting out laughing. The sound echoed back from the high ceiling, and the uncomfortable, unsettled worry inside him eased.

Charles grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the stairs. “Who cares? Come on, if you can only spare me a few minutes I’d rather like to make the most of them.”

Five minutes later Erik had Charles crowded up against his bedroom door, with no intention of going anywhere for quite a while.

It was a big, airy room, full of books and other stuff that Erik had no time to notice because the second he was inside Charles had stepped in close and slid a hand onto his inner thigh at exactly where he’d left off in the car. Since then, Erik hadn’t really been capable of rational thought. His head buzzed as he fucked his tongue into Charles’s mouth, pressing him into the woodwork. He didn’t mean to be rough, he’d never been rough with Charles before. Charles didn’t seem to mind. He was panting and helpless, head thrown back, neck exposed for Erik to lick and bite and suck on. Erik scraped over the skin with his teeth and Charles let out a whimper that shot straight to Erik’s dick.

“You are so gorgeous,” Erik told him, and Charles writhed, pressed against his leg.

“I don’t… Oh, god, Erik, please, can you… because…”

“Yes,” said Erik, with no idea what he was saying yes to, his fingers digging into Charles’s hips hard enough to bruise, all his weight pressed up against him. He thinks of his finger marks on Charles’s pale skin and shuddered, half with longing and half with horror. He wasn’t going to do that. No bruises, no pain.

He pulled away, still trembling. Charles made a desperate keening noise of protest.

“What are you… what?”

“This,” said Erik, and dropped to his knees.

“Oh, Jesus.”

They’d never done it before. Erik knew, intimately, the feel of Charles’s cock in his hand and the noise he made when he came, but he’d never tasted him. He had a vague memory of not wanting to pressure him by doing something he might not be ready to give in return.

He couldn’t remember why that was a good idea at all.

The bulge in Charles’s jeans was hard and hot. Erik ran his cheek over it, feeling the length pressing at the soft denim, then turned his head to do the same with his mouth. Charles’s hips bucked helplessly and Erik pressed them back, undoing the zipper and button with his powers and hitching his fingers into Charles’s waistband, working jeans and underwear down.

He felt hungry for it. He’d missed this, and he was good at it, he’d learned technique from Logan and when Logan sucked you off you saw stars for days. He wanted Charles heavy against his tongue, he wanted to suck him down, take it all. He wanted the shock and pulse of come in his mouth.

Charles made a strangled little noise. “Ohgodohgodohgod, Erik, please.”

His cock looked delicious, full and weeping. Erik wrapped a hand around the base and slid his lips around the head. He explored it with his tongue, enjoying the velvety skin and the familiar-yet-different taste of pre-come, and enjoying even more the noises Charles was making, mingled desperation and astonished discovery. Charles moaned Erik’s name as Erik got to work, finding his rhythm, releasing Charles’s hips a little, letting him move. It was all heat and wetness and suck and thrust. Charles was making the little grunting gasps that meant he was close, and Erik sped up, intensified everything until Charles was moaning his name and giving his hair an urgent tug. Erik batted his hand away to signify that no, thanks for the warning, very polite, but he really didn’t want to slide off for this part. This was his favourite part, and he hollowed his cheeks, sucking Charles down and sinking into the sensations. All of his awareness was directed into feeling Charles’s orgasm in the spurt of come, in the frantic flex of his hips, in the tremor that ran through his body and into Erik’s hands and mouth. As always, he thought, _I did that. That was me._

Charles slid bonelessly down the wall and coalesced into a moaning heap, flushed and stunned and trembling. His lips looked so beautiful that Erik had to touch them with his fingers and lean in to kiss them, breathing in Charles’s little fluttering gasps.

Charles kissed back wonderingly. “Oh god, you taste… oh my god,” he said, falling forwards to rest his head on Erik’s shoulder. Erik slipped an arm round his back and murmured soothing nothings. He was painfully aware of his own erection straining at his jeans. He moved his hand down, flicked open the buttons and reached into his underwear. It felt so good, with Charles curled close and hot and wrecked.

Charles raised his head. “Wait,” he said dazedly, “let me.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

Charles made a little hitching noise of need. “No, I want to, Erik, please. Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t have to,” Erik said. He managed to still his hand, but it was desperately difficult.

“I _want_ to,” Charles panted. “Why do you always think I don’t? Let me touch you. I could… I could suck you. Can I?”

Erik’s back muscles tenses. “No.” It came out sharper than he meant it to.

Charles took a ragged breath. “But why…?”

Erik cut him off. “I don’t want you to.” He had fantasised about that mouth so often, but right then it was real and he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear to shove Charles’s head down and do that to him, it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t feel right.

Charles’s flush was fading. He was hovering on the edge of bewildered hurt. Erik reached for him. “Come here, come here, Jesus, it’s not you, just… just touch, okay?” He wanted Charles closer. He wanted skin. They were both wearing far too many clothes. “This, off.”

“Oh,” said Charles. “Um, okay. Sure.” He struggled out of his t-shirt. Erik stripped off his own, and Charles suddenly looked much happier. “Does this mean I get to see you naked?” he asked.

Erik let out a noise of exasperated want and hauled him unceremoniously towards the bed. Charles laughed and stumbled with his jeans round his knees and Erik pushed him down and wrenched at them. Charles was still wearing shoes, for fuck’s sake, and everything was taking altogether too long, he needed to be touched right now.

It was worth it though. It was worth it when Charles was in his arms on the bed, kissing and caressing and stroking, and every part of Erik’s body was alive with the tingle of cool air and the heat of Charles’s skin.

It was worth it when something in him let go and he found himself babbling, _yes_ , and _please_ , and _Charles_.

It was worth it when he pressed his face into Charles’s bare shoulder and came in stuttering bursts across the curving planes of his stomach.

And lying there afterwards, naked. Utterly naked.

Charles lifted a hand to touch his cheek. A slightly sticky hand, as it turned out. “Oh, sorry,” he said, with an embarrassed snuffle of laughter. “Erik, was it good?” Something in his voice said the answer was very important.

“Good,” said Erik. “Better than good.”

Everything was good with Charles, from the least kiss or brush of a hand. He couldn’t describe it. He had never known anything remotely like it before. With Seb, sex had always been yet another power trip. Logan was great in bed, but casual, disinterested; Erik could have been anybody, it wouldn’t have mattered. Aside from that, there had only been a few drunken kisses and gropes that he barely remembered, with people he couldn’t quite place. It hadn’t prepared him for this.

Charles gave a happy sigh. “I suppose we should clean up a bit,” he said. “You stay here.”

He slips off the bed. Erik was treated to a particularly stunning view of his pale, perfect buttocks as he walked barefoot to the bathroom and came back with a washcloth. He made an enthusiastic if inefficient job of wiping them down. They were both a little damp and chilly by the end of it, so they climbed between the sheets and settled comfortably close. Charles was spooned against Erik’s chest and under his arm, playing absently with his fingers. “I think I like this house better now,” he said. “This room, at any rate.”

Erik was also a fan of the room. But Charles had a point about the rest of the house. In its way it was pretty horrible, cold and empty, a mausoleum for storing dead air. It wasn’t the sort of place someone so eager for friendship should live in.

He ran his thumb across Charles’s wrist. “You never talk about your stepfather,” he said. “You don’t talk about your family at all.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Despite the warm, blissful haze he was in, Erik frowned, feeling that curl of worry again. Charles was so non-committal, unwilling to talk. It wasn’t like him. But perhaps it was like another boy, a boy left alone in a cold house with someone cruel and powerful. He tightened his grip on Charles’s arm.

“He’s not… Charles, your stepfather, does he…” He could barely bring himself to imagine it, let alone say it.

Charles petted at his fingers. “You mean does he hurt me? Oh for goodness sake, Erik, don’t be silly. Of course he doesn’t. That’s one dragon you don’t need to kill for me. He’s just a rather tiresome man who happens to be married to my mother. I barely see them, most of the time.”

“Them?” Erik repeated.

“Him, them, I don’t know,” said Charles. “Erik, you’re making too much of this. It’s nothing.”

“What about your real father? Does he still live in England?”

Charles twitched his head, as though trying to look at Erik and remembering in the middle that his neck didn’t turn that far. “He’s dead,” he said, sounding mildly surprised. “Didn’t I ever tell you that? He died when I was four, I really don’t remember him.”

Erik’s mind froze up. He couldn’t comprehend how he could have been with Charles for two months and have absolutely no clue about any of this.

“No, you didn’t tell me,” he said, trying to make it into a statement rather than a _Why the hell didn’t you tell me?_  “I’m sorry. That sucks, that you didn’t get to know him.”

Charles wriggled his shoulders in a horizontal shrug. “What does it matter?” he said softly. “There’s no reason to think he’d have liked me very much.”

“But he’s your _father_ ,” said Erik. He thought of his dad, steady and constant, and his spiky, clever, funny mom. He’d never questioned for an instant whether they like him or not.

Charles did his odd shrug again, the muscles of his back tensing and relaxing.

Erik’s chest ached. He pressed his face into Charles’s hair. “What are you talking about? Of course he’d have liked you,” he said. “Everyone likes you. Look at you, you beautiful idiot. You’re one of those impossible people who makes the world better by being in it. You’re wonderful. Oh, baby, don’t cry,” he said helplessly, because Charles had turned his face into the pillow, suddenly shaking with quiet sobs, barely more than shuddering breaths.

“I’m sorry. I… I’m just… really glad I met you.”

Erik kissed the back of his head and though about exactly how he was going to kill this stepfather and whoever Charles’s rotten, useless mother turned out to be. It wasn’t fair. Charles had no defences.

After a moment of muffled sniffing, Charles gave himself a little shake. “This is so ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m very happy really. I can’t think of anywhere I’ve been happier.”

“It’s okay to cry,” Erik said, because it was the sort of thing you were supposed to say. “Everyone cries. There doesn’t even have to be a reason.”

Charles’s snuffles mixed with laughter. “Yes, I bet you do it all the time. Single manly tears, I should think.” He rolled over to look at Erik, revealing the puffy red eyes and swollen lips that came from multiple manly tears. At least he was smiling. “By the way,” he said, mopping at his face with the sheet, “was it my imagination or did you just call me baby?”

Erik kissed him on the corner of his mouth. “No. Definitely no, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Because I could have sworn…” said Charles. He gave Erik a watery version of his squirrel face. “Maybe I should start calling you daddy.”

“Oh my _god.”_ Erik grabbed him and squeezed him. “Shut up, _Charles_.”

Charles chuckled. “Yes, _Erik_ , whatever you say.” He wriggled until Erik loosened his hold, and then squirmed into a more comfortable position, relaxing into Erik’s arms, breathing easily.

 


	3. Consequences

_…mutant groups are now claiming that the culprits are being held illegally and denied their human rights. Government agencies involved still refuse to release details or even confirm that the two mutants have been apprehended…_

“Do you have to have that on?” Erik complained, digging a hand into the cookie jar.

His dad glanced up from his half-peeled pile of potatoes. “Yes,” he said. “Have you finished your homework? You’ve got another half hour before dinner, I should think. And don’t eat cookies.”

“Who are you, my mother?” said Erik, in response to both the question and the reproof.

His dad laughed. “Don’t let her catch you at it, then. If you’re done you can help me with these.”

“I’m not done,” Erik said hastily, retreating into the hall. It was true, he was behind on his English essay and his math thanks to spending half of the previous afternoon and evening fast asleep in a prolonged post-coital cuddle. He’d woken up around seven, to the sound of Charles’s very flustered explanation that yes, Mrs Lehnsherr, Erik was there, Charles would just call him to the phone, yes, they had lost track of time, no, there was no particular reason for that, yes, Charles would send him right home in one piece, no, of course Erik had been a perfect gentleman.

Erik had snatched his phone out of Charles’s hands, said, “On my way, mom,” and hung up quickly, because talking to his mother while naked in his boyfriend’s bed was just wrong.

Tonight he had to pick Charles up right after dinner to go to Tony’s party, and tomorrow would almost certainly be spent recovering from the effects of said party, so he had to scramble to get his work done. The essay was on ‘Of Mice and Men’, a book that Erik hated with every fibre of his being. Luckily Charles adored it and had been babbling on about hope and fate and responsibility for the past two weeks, so all Erik had to do was switch his brain off and let the last of the unconsciously-absorbed nonsense flow back out again. The math, he decided, could wait. Even exhausted and hung over he wouldn’t be likely to get it wrong. By the time his mom called up the stairs he was pretty much good to go.

Dinner was depressing.

_...there have been reports of increased unrest between humans and mutants, including some incidences of violence. The White House has issued a statement denouncing any backlash against the mutant community and calling for…_

“Dad, turn it off, I’m trying to eat,” Erik grumbled, trying his best to tune out the noise.

His dad flicked off the radio. “I hope you’ll be careful tonight.”

“It’s just a party,” said Erik, and started shovelling down his food as fast as possible.

His parents exchanged glances and shrugs. His father’s shrug said, _Well, I tried_. His mother’s, very eloquently, said, _You’d think he was raised by wolves_.

“Give our love to Charles,” she told him. “You’re lucky to have that boy.”

“Yeah.” He pushed back his chair. “Thanks for dinner. Don’t wait up.”

 

***

 

Charles was waiting by the mansion gate, looking exceptionally pretty and slightly awkward. He was wearing the delectable jeans and a soft, dark shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up. His hair had been carefully mussed out of its usual neat waves. He slid into the passenger seat and gave Erik an embarrassed smile.

“Raven dressed me.”

Erik grinned. “It shows. Remind me to thank her.” He leaned over for a kiss. “Ready to go?”

“As I’ll ever be,” said Charles. “I’m wearing hair gel. Is that normal? I’m sure that’s not normal.”

Erik sighed and pulled the car back out into the road. “You look gorgeous. Keep your hand off my knee this time or I’ll undo all Raven’s hard work.”

Charles smiled angelically.

Erik had to remove his hand no fewer than six times before they reached Tony’s house.

The Stark residence was on the same scale as Charles’s, but modern and sleek and somehow both much showier and much friendlier. When the door opened it spilled out a flood of light and noise and laughter, and revealed Jan van Dyne decked out in a retro black and yellow dress.

“Hi sweetie, hi handsome,” she said, with a fond smile for Charles and an appreciative one for Erik. “Come right on in. Tony’s around somewhere. By the pool, I think. Let’s get you boys a drink.”

Charles bounced in delightedly, kissing her on the cheek, complementing her dress and letting her tug him over to the drinks table. Erik followed more slowly, soaking up the atmosphere, a little amused at the number of friendly greetings he got as he pushed his way through the chattering groups and crunched over an unexpected sea of Cheetos. There was a gentle haze of alcohol in the air. A stumbling, already-too-drunk girl toppled into his arms and looked up at him with bleary approval. “I know you,” she said, waving a hand in his face. “You’re Charles’s boyfriend. You two are so cute together.”

Erik propped her against the wall, stepped around her and found himself face to face with Emma, who was smirking.

“Isn’t that adorable?” she said. “You’re famous by association.”

“Yeah, adorable. Go stick your claws into someone else, will you?”

She slipped her arm into his. “I will, darling, but I need you first. Pyro’s being so tiresome. Someone pushed him into the pool and now his lighter doesn’t work. Come and terrorise him a little.”

Erik groaned and grabbed for a beer. “I’m not one of your minions.”

“No, but you’re wonderfully obliging,” she laughed. “Oh don’t be grouchy, it’s not as though you won’t enjoy it.”

Pyro was an uppity, arrogant kid, and Erik hadn’t forgotten that he’d once tossed Charles into a dumpster. Besides, it seemed like he needed to work on his reputation. _Charles’s boyfriend_. Jesus.

He shrugged. “Fine.”

Emma beamed. “You’re an angel,” she said, and steered him inexorably away.

It was over an hour later when he walked into the kitchen and finally rediscovered Charles, utterly involved in a game of beer pong, giggly and flushed. Erik walked over and hugged him from behind.

“Oh, hello,” said Charles, snuggling back into the hug. “Look, ping pong balls and cups! This is a great game, we should play this in England. It’s lovely, everyone’s lovely. We are an excellent beer pong team,” he declared, giving his nearest team mate astonishingly flirtatious smile.

“How much have you had to drink?” asked Erik, eyeing the cups.

Charles blinked up at him consideringly. “Some.” He pouted. “You abandoned me and I missed you, so I made some new friends. What have you been doing?”

Erik wasn’t entirely sure. There had been the menacing, then something to do with a rocket that some guys were making out of beer cans, then Pepper Potts talking to him very seriously about the care and feeding of geniuses, and the utterly hilarious spectacle of Azazel doing the Macarena, which would be with him for the rest of his life. He’d also drunk a fair amount of beer himself, as he recalled.

“Stuff,” he said. “But now you should come and hang out with me.”

“If by hang out you mean make out, which I suspect you do, I am very on board with this plan,” said Charles, slipping his arms round Erik’s neck.

Erik dragged him bodily into the corridor. That was when their host finally decided to put in an appearance.

“Steve, Tony!” said Charles. “Hello!” He wriggled out of Erik’s arms and scampered over.

“Charles Xavier,” said Tony, flashing white teeth in a boyish grin. “Having fun?”

Charles nodded, then frowned interestedly. “Tony, are you wearing hair gel?” He sidled closer to see.

“Sure am,” said Tony, sliding an arm around his shoulders. “Here, you can feel it. In fact, you can feel pretty much anything you like, looking the way you do tonight.”

“You’re flirting with me in front of Erik,” Charles said amusedly, reaching up to caress his head. “That might be unwise.”

Tony licked his lips and turned the grin up a notch. “It’s worth the risk.”

Tony was well known for flirting with anything that moved. Apparently, with a bit of alcohol inside him, Charles was exactly the same. Erik exchanged a commiserating glance with Steve. They each grabbed a boyfriend by the scruff of the neck and pulled them apart.

“Tony, Charles is taken,” said Steve, with a low thrum of warning in his voice, “and so are you.”

Tony purred, dark eyes glittering. “I love it when you get possessive,” he said. “Charles, we gotta do this more often. Come find me when you’ve shaken off the guard dog, we’ll work on making Steve here jealous.”

“Um,” said Charles, blinking in adorable confusion and gazing into Tony’s face. It was such a beautiful performance that he had to be doing it on purpose.

Erik gave him a shake. “Don’t say um. Say no. God, you’re a menace when you’re drunk.”

Charles grinned. “See you later, Tony. In a totally normal non-assignation-making way.”

“Sure,” said Tony, winking.

Erik had a growl hovering in his throat, but before he could drag Charles away they were interrupted by a shout from the top of the stairs.

“Hey, Erik, catch!”

He spun round and raised his hands just in time to avoid being brained by a NERF gun. He stared at it, nonplussed, then jerked back as several NERF darts hit him in the face.

“What the fuck?” he yelled.

“Tony’s got a freaking arsenal of these things,” called Havok, waving his own gun enthusiastically in the air.

“Go to hell,” Erik told him. NERF guns were incredibly juvenile, and Havok could fire laser beams from his chest so he had no reason to think they were cool. And Erik could ignore the fact that Havok just shot him in the face, because he was an adult and above such things.

And the fact that Peter had just swung past on an actual rope firing wildly at anyone and everyone, with Jubilee blasting him from the ground. And the fact that Azazel had a gun in each hand and one in his _tail_.

“They’re from when I was a child,” said Tony, with a look of weary distain. He turned casually and opened a cupboard. “Now this,” he added, pulling out the most badass pimped-out NERF gun imaginable, “this is new.” He tossed it to Erik and grabbed another for himself. “You with me?”

Erik glanced down at Charles. “I need to shoot some things.”

“Yes, I thought you might,” said Charles.

 

***

 

It was ridiculously fun and stupid, chasing all over the upper floor of the house, Tony at his shoulder, dealing dire revenge to Havok, cornering and bombarding Peter and teaming up with Jubilee to generally wipe the floor with everyone else. It was fun just playing, like being a kid again, back before he knew what he was, when everybody was the same.

Right up until Azazel appeared directly in front of him and he skidded to a startled halt.

_Erik_ , Emma said in his head, her thoughts sharp as diamond. _Charles needs you._

“Seb’s here, downstairs,” said Azazel, panting, words tumbling over each other. “He’s got Charles. He’s drunk and he’s crazy, Erik. Come on.” He grabbed Erik’s arm. The world exploded into red smoke, and Erik was back in the main room, staggering and dizzy, before he could even process Emma’s thought or work out what Azazel was saying. There was the heavy beat of music in the air, and he was staring straight at Seb’s smirk and Charles’s white, desperate face.

Ten seconds ago he’d been laughing.

 

***

 

They were still moving to the music. That was the strange thing. A whole roomful of drunken teenagers, most of them silent and shocked, but every twitch, sway, clench of a hand and bitten lip seemed to be part of the rhythm. They were like one creature, with one focus.

Only Charles and Seb were separate.

Seb had his hand across Charles’s throat. It was gentle for the moment, he wasn’t gripping, but Charles was leaning into it, straining to maintain some tiny distance between his back and Seb’s chest.

A hand on his neck. It would only take a squeeze, with Seb’s strength, or a flash of stored power. Just like it would only take a blast from Havok or an acid ball from Angel. Even Emma, stretching her powers to the limit, could make a traffic-filled road appear clear and send Charles stepping, all unaware, out in front of a car.

Erik, of course, could have killed him in a thousand different ways.

He’d never hated mutants before.

The music shut off abruptly. Erik didn't look to see who’d done it. For a moment everything seemed still, but then his ears adjusted to the hiss of breath and the tiny whispers flowing around the room as people glanced at their neighbours. It was a ripple of confusion. They didn’t understand. They knew of Seb, but they didn’t know him. They didn’t know what he was capable of.

Erik's mouth started to form the words, _Let him go,_ but what was Seb going to do? Nod and smile and say 'of course, so sorry,'? No. He crossed his arms instead, planting his feet apart, and stared across the room in a traditional show-no-fear pose that he was fairly sure wasn’t fooling anyone. “Well?” he said, “what is it this time? Aren't you supposed to be off on you crusade with your genocidal friends?”

Seb laughed. He was honestly, sardonically amused. “You know, I was on my way,” he said, “but I couldn't miss the party, could I? Not when _everyone_ would be here. I wanted to see all of you playing together so nicely.”

“What's it to you if we are?” said Erik. It was surprising how easily and casually the words slipped out when all he could think of was Charles. “What do you care about a handful of kids letting off steam when you’ve got a whole country to kill? It’s kind of small-time for the great Sebastian Shaw.”

“Oh, it means a lot to me,” said Seb, his smirk still firmly in place. “I'm curious. You're something of an anomaly, Erik. While every other mutant is up in arms and raging over what’s being done to us, you decide it’s time for a little get-together? How could I resist?”

“Nothing's been done to us, Seb,” said Erik. He was confused himself, the same as all the rest. Okay, the news reports had been a bit grim, but the country was hardly about to explode into a civil war. “I don't even know what you're talking about. Nobody's raging about anything. Some kids committed a crime, They’ve probably been arrested by now. Big deal, end of story.”

“Arrested?” said Seb, smiling and derisive. “You little fool.” He stroked a hand down Charles's cheek in a grotesque parody of affection. “They were killed. In secret, without trial. You know it as well as I do.”

_…denied their human rights_ …

It felt like someone was sliding an ice cube down his spine. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, “that’s not true.” His voice shook on the words and everyone in the room shifted with sudden uncertainty.

It wasn’t true. Everybody knew that, except Seb who was completely crazy. There were no mutants up in arms, it was all in his fucked up, psychopathic head.

The situation was under control, Stryker had said.

That could mean anything.

“Wake up!” said Seb, his voice cracking out like a gunshot, lazy drawl turning to ruthless command in a split second. “You’re living in a fantasy world, you and your brainwashed half-mutants, pretending nothing’s wrong. You’re strong, Erik! You used to give them purpose. Now you give them this creature, this _thing_ , preaching peace and harmony, blinding them all until it’s too late. Well, no more.” Power crackled though his hands and blue-white sparks earthed themselves in Charles’s skin. “He comes with me.”

Charles let out a tiny, pained gasp. There was fear in his eyes, just as there had been that first day when Riptide had pressed him up against the locker. If he’d been frightened then, he was terrified now, but once again his lips were determinedly pressed together. He wasn’t panicked. He wasn’t struggling. He was just looking at Erik, unwavering and unreadable.

Erik had promised himself that Seb would never touch Charles. Great job he’d done there, since he couldn't even be sure that Charles would end the night intact. But he had to try. He needed to buy time and play for position and the only thing he could think of was stupider the stupidest thing he'd ever done.

“Alright then,” he said, “why are you still here?”

Seb raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I said why are you still here, Seb? You’ve got your prey in your hands, so what's all the posturing for? This is bullshit! You’re so fucking self-righteous with your speeches and your conspiracies. This isn’t about mutants and it sure as hell isn’t about Charles.”

“I think it is,” said Seb. “Everything’s about _Charles_ for you, Erik.”

“Yeah?” Erik snapped, cruel and mocking in his turn. “Well for you everything’s about me. God, you’re pathetic. Stop denying it. If you were here to hurt him you’d have done it, you'd be gone and he'd be bleeding or dead, wouldn't he, because you're a homicidal nut-job. But you're still here. This is all for me, this little show. This is all a way to get to me, because you still want me, Seb. You’ve always wanted me. You want to prove to me that I’m yours.”

Seb’s eyes flickered, not quite masking his fury. He tried to speak but Erik was on a roll and didn’t plan on giving up the floor.

“Do you think you’re stronger than me?” he snarled. _“Do you?_ Well let’s find out. You want to prove something, you want to fight, so let’s fight.”

Seb gave a nasty, forced laugh. “You’re making demands? I can kill him now, if you prefer.”

“I’m giving you what you want,” Erik grated out. “You and me, one on one, on your terms.”

For a moment, he was swept up in the anger. This was how it was always going to be in the end, for the two of them. They were always going to fight it out. But he was going to win, he knew it. Something thrilled through him, an expectation, a fierce desire for the inevitable showdown… and he met Charles’s frightened eyes. Suddenly there was nothing good or right or thrilling about it, he was just freaking out and pretty much wasted and he didn’t know what he was thinking. What the hell was he doing? They were caught up in this bizarre power struggle and the whole world was insane, and somehow, by some horrible chance, Charles was stuck right in the middle of it.

The realisation didn’t change anything. He would still have to fight.

_Erik, you're a total fucking idiot,_ Emma told him in a flash of thought almost too fast to catch.

_Yeah, I know,_ he thought back, and it was almost funny. _Tell Charles it'll be okay._

_What the hell else do you think I've been doing?_

He should have known she would. _Thank you._ He tried to refocus. His head was spinning and he wanted to cry, and he wanted to throw up, and he really, really wanted to kill Sebastian Shaw.

“You think you’re that important?” said Seb. He gave Erik a pitying look. “You’re nothing to me. I’ve got what I came for.”

Erik curled his lip. “Scared?” he taunted. Personally he was scared to death. If he hadn’t drunk so much he probably would have been hiding under a bed somewhere, shaking like a leaf. Thank god for beer. Equally, if he hadn’t been drunk he might have been able to think of something a damned sight more sensible than challenging Seb to single combat.

Though it was a very knight-in-shining-armour thing to do. The thought almost made him smile.

“Scared of you? Hardly,” said Seb, shrugging languidly. “But I’m not above killing two birds with one stone. I’ll take your human, and since I’m sure you’re about to say, ‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ I’ll do that too. I’ll enjoy seeing how my little boy’s grown. One on one, my terms. Outside, get in the car.” He took a step, then paused. “Oh, but we can’t trust your friends to obey the rules, can we?”

Power arced from him, catching Azazel and Emma full in their chests. There was a sudden, brief flash of her agony, fading to nothing in an instant. The room filled with shrieks. Erik heard himself shouting Emma’s name, but he couldn’t leave Charles to go to her. Seb’s voice cut through the din. “Just out of action, Erik. I don’t kill my own kind. Only animals and traitors.” He shoved Charles towards the door, keeping one hand clenched in the fabric of Charles’s shirt and the other spread across his back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. Just before he stepped outside he spun back to face the crowd. “Stay,” he commanded, laughing.

The remaining mutants hesitated. Erik gave them a tiny little shake of the head. It wasn’t worth the risk, not with Seb’s hands poised to cause pain. “Stay,” he echoed, “please,” as the door slammed behind them.

Seb’s car was pulled up carelessly on Tony’s front lawn. Erik knew that car of old. It was flashy and sporty and he used to be jealous of it, though these days it was somewhat tainted by not-terribly-fond memories of time spent in the back seat. It would be more tainted soon. Seb tugged Charles over to it and tossed Erik the keys.

“You’re driving.”

Charles twisted awkwardly round. In Seb’s grip he looked like a child, but he was more composed than he ought to have been as he blinked in the half-darkness. “I don’t think he’s in a fit state to,” he said. He glanced from Seb to Erik. “Actually, none of us are.”

Jesus Christ. Ridiculously, Erik found his breath huffing in a crazy almost-laugh. Partly it was just wonderful to hear Charles’s voice, and partly… well, seriously? _“That’s_ what you’re worried about?” he asked.

“I’m the one that’s most likely to die if we crash,” said Charles. “It’s not exactly the only thing I’m worried about, but it’s on the list.” He pressed his lips together again and blinked hard. His eyes were glistening.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Erik told him.

Seb smiled. “No,” he said, “it isn't. Get the fuck in the car, Erik. I'll be in the back with your little pet, and believe me, if you irritate me in any way I will enjoy hurting him.”

Erik had absolutely no trouble believing that.

“Where to?” he asked, sliding into the front seat.

“The quarry. I don't want you to say I didn't give you a fighting chance.”

Yes, very generous, Erik thought bitterly. There was a lot of scrap metal lying around in the quarry. There was also a small electrical sub-station with big yellow signs reading 'Danger of Death'.

Still, at least it was electricity. It was the easiest way for Seb to charge up, without the considerable hassle of setting fire to something or getting hit by a truck, but it was also the one Erik was best equipped to deal with. Seb had always been slow at converting power to different forms. It was his one weakness.

Well, that and his incredible arrogance. Erik planned to make good use of both.

 

***

 

The quarry had always belonged to mutants, for as far back as Erik could remember. It was a rough, rocky tumble of junk, a worthless piece of land, but it was private, like nowhere else in town. For him, it wasn’t just a place to hang out. It was a place to enjoy being who he really was, to use his power where there was no one to see and nothing to hurt.

Perhaps some the first scattered, frightened mutant children had used it, before Erik was even born, to try out their abilities in secret.

Human kids didn’t go there much, or they hadn’t until Charles changed everything in his innocent, hopeful way. And somehow that change was part of the night’s drama. Erik’s implausible tumble into love, those optimistic interspecies friendships, and the two kids in California taking out their fury in the most hideous way; all of that had led to this. It had led to Charles stumbling down a stony path into a barren space between rock walls, where two dangerous, furious creatures were about to tear each other apart.

Charles turned as they came to a stop. The lights from the road fell across his face. He looked completely out of place, with his gelled hair and his sexy outfit, standing on what was, essentially, a battlefield.

Erik wanted so much to hold him. He reached out a hand instead, brushing against Charles’s sleeve in the briefest contact. Even that was better than nothing. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Being sorry wouldn’t make any difference, but it needed to be said.

Charles gave him a watery smile. “Don’t be. It was worth it.”

No, Erik thought, nothing could be worth this. He twitched his thoughts away from the idea. Enough musing. He had a job to do, and he was going to finish it.

“Very affecting,” Seb sneered. He tugged Charles away and shoved him into the little hollow between the quarry wall and the wire fence around the substation. It was a place they used as a safe zone in one of the more ridiculous variations of super-lethal-mutant-ball, but it wouldn’t be very safe when Seb got his hands on that electricity.

“Not there,” Erik protested.

Seb shrugged. “My terms. He stays where I can keep an eye on him.”

There was no way to fight it. Seb was in control.

“What happens now?” Charles asked. He was crouched against the wall, huddled up as though it could offer him some protection. “Twenty paces, turn and fire?”

Seb ignored him. He turned to Erik. There was something ugly and triumphant in his face. He was hurting Erik, hurting both of them, and he liked it. It turned him on. “Are you ready?” he said.

Erik tensed, poised on the balls of his feet. He paused until he was truly ready, because Seb wouldn’t piss about.

“Ready.”

The moment the word was out of his mouth he was leaping sideways, barely in time to avoid the bolt of power that blasted the spot where he’d been standing. Charles yelled with fright. Erik landed neatly, and locked eyes with Seb.

“Run, then,” Seb laughed, and turned and ripped his way through the fencing to where the electricity was waiting for him.

Erik didn't hesitate, just sprinted for the safety of the rock and scrap metal jumble by the farthest wall. He was already reaching out for the iron. There was plenty to play with. By the time he got there he had four spindly poles, and he jammed them into the earth between himself and Seb, just in time for Seb's casually tossed handful of lightning to fizzle down them. The feedback was a bitch and he had to shake his head to clear it, but Seb would need a whole lot of control to get electricity past the barrier from a distance. Seb wasn’t big on control.

Of course, other stuff could get through.

Seb raised his hands, holding another shimmering ball of power. This one rippled and twisted and reddened. Erik dived behind the half-rusted shell of a car to avoid being roasted by a fireball. Dry weeds flared and died around him. He peered over the top in time to see Seb heft a boulder and hurl it across the quarry. Fuck, fuck, fuck. With no time to think, he wrenched the whole car into the air and batted the rock aside.

Jesus, Seb was really showing off.

Erik spared a glance for Charles, just a blurred smudge in the dark shadows. He seemed to be okay. No misplaced power had caught him. Yet.

Seb had plunged his hands into the crackling electricity again, had recharged. He was strolling casually towards the little barricade, dripping sparks. Erik couldn’t stay on the defensive for ever. He rifled desperately through his options. What would be the most obvious move? A crushing blow would be too dangerous just yet. Cutting, then. It would take less strength, so would give Seb less power. He reached for a sheet of corrugated iron and ripped it into strips which reformed into dozens of vicious darts, like little knives. A moment of concentration sent them sweeping across the quarry and into Seb’s body. They bounced off, of course, but he saw Seb flinch as one of them ricocheted down his arm, taking him by surprise, too swift and sharp for him to absorb its energy.

Seb grinned and raised his hand to lick away a smear of blood.

Erik gritted his teeth and tried again, but there were no chinks in Seb’s defences. He was ready with a blasting shockwave, and the darts tumbled back towards Erik. He barely caught them before they hit. Killed by metal. That would have been ironic.

“Is that the best you can do?” Seb called. “I’m disappointed. This will be over too quickly.” He sent out another bolt of electricity, and Erik slammed his lightning rod into its path. He knew he was being played with. Seb was drawing it out, making it last, before going in for the kill. No, Erik thought, not the kill, he was almost certain. Seb wouldn’t want to spoil the fun. He’d make sure Erik knew he was beaten, and then he’d be back to do it all again, in a week, a year, ten years, still smirking, still taunting, still proving his power.

He probably wouldn't kill Charles either. Why sever an exposed nerve when he could keep on using it to cause pain?

At least the darts had bought some time for Erik to take stock of the metal around him. He’d got a location on the large pieces, the old engine blocks, girders and machine parts, and the easier, malleable stuff, the oil drums and sheet iron. He’d had time, as well, to pull some of the metal together into two rough lumps. He heaved them into the air and sent them spinning in an interweaving pattern, swooping down and around Seb, darting towards him then veering away. It was unexpected enough to hold Seb’s attention while Erik formed a third ball, then a fourth.

Not for long. It only took seconds for Seb to assess the situation, and he smiled. What, after all, could Erik do with those?

He needed more time. He slammed one of the balls out of its pattern, catching Seb full in the back. The metal shivered in his mind as the force was drawn out of it, and he almost fumbled it as it jerked to a halt. Seb didn’t even move.

Erik shaped a fifth ball.

Seb gave a crazy shout of laughter. “I didn’t think you were this stupid.” His fist drove into the rock at his feet. The ground shivered and cracked. “What do you think you can do to me? All you can do is give me more power.”

_And you just used it up again_ , Erik thought, _you smug fuck. I didn’t think you were that stupid either. God, I didn’t even have to try._

He had six spinning lumps. That would be enough.

“Hit me!” Seb called. “Come on, hit me, see where it gets you. See where it gets your filthy little human. I'm going to enjoy him, Erik. I’ll fuck him like I fucked you!”

He opened his arms wide.

Erik sucked in his breath. It was better than he could have hoped. He had his chance, while Seb was standing there, recklessly confident, low on power and motionless. He could do this. He could, for Charles.

Suddenly he felt beautifully relaxed.

_This is going to make a sphere…_

It has to be fast, and it might not be fast enough. A split second, that was all.

_…it’ll contract…_

His wrecking-ball lumps were poised, all six of them, and he focused his mind. He couldn’t hesitate. There was no time, and yet it felt like he had all the time in the world. Everything slowed until it was just him and the metal. It was beautiful. It wanted to obey.

He’d done it so often it was almost second nature, even on this astonishing scale. An easy flick of his mind stretched the first ball into a sheet. Another blink and the sheet wrapped itself up until, for the barest instant of time, Seb was invisible, surrounded by a thin metal sphere touching the ground all round him. Then the sphere imploded, shrinking down and thickening around Seb’s shape, as accurate as Erik could be. Seb’s charged skin was a guiding pulse, the electricity in his body licking at the metal, the iron in his blood keeping Erik on course.

_…it won’t hurt…_

Surround him. Enclose him. Don’t hurt him. Don’t touch him.

Briefly there was a silvery Seb-shaped figure standing there. Seb lashed out and the metal crackled with a surge of electrical current, earthing itself harmlessly in the ground. Erik jerked at the feedback, mouth stretching in a malicious grin. This was what he’d been counting on. It was instinctive for Seb to use the energy he absorbed in its raw form, and he couldn't fight metal with electricity. More of his power wasted, but he still had some strength. With a grinding metallic screech he ripped bodily through the sheet. But it was too late, Erik was already there, remoulding it and slamming the second into place around Seb’s body and outstretched arm. This one bent but didn’t break. And another, he could feel Seb straining at the metal.

The tingle of electricity was fading. Seb had used too much of his power. He couldn’t struggle anymore.

_…breathing might be a little difficult…_

A fourth sheet. A fifth. The metal was half a foot thick now.

Like wrapping up a parcel.

The sixth block dropped to the ground. Erik couldn’t hold it. He was so tired he could barely stand up. But there was nothing left to do. Nothing to fight, only a sullen lump of metal in the middle of a dark quarry.

It didn’t look alive. It didn’t look like a person at all. It wasn’t a person, not anymore. It was all over. All that effort, and it had taken a handful of seconds. That was it. He'd won.

Suddenly Charles was in his arms and Erik clutched at him, but it wasn’t an embrace. Charles tore at him, sobbing. “Erik, let him out. Erik! He’ll die, he’s dying. Let him out!”

“Let him die,” said Erik. Seb didn't matter. Charles was safe and they were going home.

The car was waiting, just up beyond the fence. He started dragging Charles away, squeezing at his upper arm to keep him from struggling. There would be a bruise tomorrow, he thought numbly. Had Seb bruised him already?

“Stop it!” Charles begged. “Go back, you can’t do this, Erik, please, _no!_ _”_ He strained back towards Seb, as though there were something his helpless human hands could do.

“Yes,” Erik told him. It was the only way. If Seb lived he could come back and hurt them again. This way, he wasn’t a threat.

How long would it take to suffocate? Not very long.

Charles’s face was a horrified mask. He dug in his heels, tangled his hands in Erik’s shirt and wrenched. “Don’t!” he said, and somehow the gasping, sobbing word snapped out strong and sharp. Erik stumbled. It was too loud. It seemed to echo off the quarry walls. “You can’t, it’s murder. Don’t kill him, Erik, please!”

Something was pressing on Erik’s eardrums. He couldn’t think straight. He tugged Charles forwards again, lifting him off his feet. He could feel himself shaking. His skin prickled with sweat. “We have to go,” he said, but he wasn’t sure. It was confusing.

It didn’t matter, he decided. Seb would be dead soon.

**_“NO!”_**   howled Charles, desperate, frantic, and something more than words spilled out of him with the cry.

_Desperate, frantic, have to stop it, can’t let him die, can’t let him KILL._

It was like being hit by a train. Panic slammed into Erik’s mind. Suddenly he knew this couldn’t happen, it couldn’t be allowed to happen, Seb mustn't die.

_Erik, you've got to get him out!_

He spun wildly round and flung out his hands, scrabbling for the remnants of his power. He could feel the cold iron mass and the tiny warm thrum of life within it. The metal was hard and solid, but he had to break it, it was the most important thing in the world. He tore at it with the last of his strength. Chunks spun away, _got to hurry, no time,_ but he was so tired. “I can’t,” he panted.

_You must!_

“I can't, it’s not enough.”

**_Do it!_** screamed the voice in his head, and it was impossible to disobey, he’d have done anything he was told. He would have died for that voice without hesitation. There was a wrench inside him as he ripped into a last power reserve he didn’t know he had, draining it dry to make one last desperate, struggling, effort.

The cocoon ripped.

Seb’s limp body tumbled out onto the quarry floor.

Erik fell to his knees. His ears were filled with sobs and he didn't know if they were his own. His mind whirled and surged down unfamiliar tracks, until he felt spread out so thin that there was nothing of him left.

The world faded to black.

 

***

 

When he woke up there was a folded jacket under his head and Azazel was peering down at him. “Hey,” he said, with obvious relief. “You back with us?”

Erik blinked up at the stars and waited for them to stop dancing around. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “I’m okay.” He had a splitting headache and felt so tired he could barely move, but he didn’t seem to be dying. He struggled into a sitting position. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

For a moment he drew a blank, but as he forced himself properly awake everything clicked into focus. Of course he remembered. He could see it all with crystal clarity. The metal and the confusion and that awful scream that had cut all the way through him. The cocoon ripping open, the body falling free. He knew what he’d done. He just didn’t have any idea why he’d done it.

“Where’s Seb?” he asked.

“I left him at the hospital. They’re calling the police.”

“Alive?” said Erik, feeling a chill run through him. Seb shouldn’t have been alive. There had been only one chance, only one plan with any hope of working. He’d used it. It was wasted.

Azazel’s eyes went hard. “Yes, alive, you lucky fuck. Though god knows how Charles got him breathing again, the state he’s in.”

He remembered Charles tugging at him and crying and begging. And then… what? A voice. There had been a voice, a shattering command.

Charles’s voice.

He rubbed a gritty hand across his face, as though it could wipe the idea from his mind. Not Charles, the name didn’t fit. Charles meant soft hair against his cheek, sweet, nibbling kisses, laughing chatter about everything and nothing. Charles was gentle and breakable, Erik’s to protect. Whoever that implacable voice had been, it was nobody Erik knew.

“Your beloved boyfriend’s a wreck, in case you’re at all interested,” said Azazel, snapping Erik’s attention back to the present. “I wanted to take him to the hospital too but Emma said we should keep him here where there aren’t so many people.”

Erik followed his gesture and saw the huddled figure a few metres away. Emma was on her knees beside him, a hand pressed against the side of his head, her pretty white outfit muddied. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but he caught the tone, so tender. It was like nothing he'd ever heard from her before. There were other people there too, standing well back along the quarry wall. Jan’s boldly coloured dress stood out in the gloom, and the glowing globule of light further down the line must have belonged to Jubilee. Even from far away they all looked tense, anxious and watchful, focused on Charles.

“He did something to me,” said Erik.

Azazel nodded. “Yeah, he did. He's a telepath.”

Erik’s heart gave a weird lurch. “What?” he asked.

“He's a telepath. Emma heard him yelling from halfway across town, that’s how we knew where you were. He’s not making a whole lot of sense right now, but he said he had to stop you killing Seb, which apparently is what you were planning to do because you are totally fucking insane. He managed it somehow. His power must be off the scale, Emma says there’s no way in hell that she could have done what he did.”

“But he’s a human,” Erik protested. His whole head was throbbing, but his thoughts were numb and it seemed like the whole world was conspiring to make the situation more and more bewildering.

“No he isn’t,” said Azazel impatiently. “Listen to what I’m saying to you. He’s a mutant, and you should be grateful because that fact just saved your ass.” He put a hand on Erik’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. For a moment his voice softened into concern. “Erik, didn’t anyone ever tell you that you can’t just go around killing people?”

“I…” Erik began, but he wasn’t sure how to end the sentence. “I wouldn't have...” he tried, but he would have, and Azazel knew it. The awareness slowly dawned that he had been very lucky. Very lucky indeed.

“Anyway,” said Azazel, businesslike again, “we can deal with how utterly fucked up you are later. If you can walk you’d better come and see Charles.”

Erik stifled a moan. Walking seemed like enough effort on its own, and seeing Charles was something he could barely even contemplate, but he let himself be hauled to his feet and stumbled over the short distance to where the two of them were sitting. Charles didn’t seem to notice, but Emma looked up. Her face was stamped with exhaustion. Erik belatedly realised that the last time he’d seen her she and Azazel had both just been hit hard by Seb's electricity. “Are you guys okay?” he asked awkwardly. “He hurt you. I forgot.”

“We're fine,” said Azazel, “we were just knocked out for a few minutes. It’s not important.” His red-skinned hand brushed gently over Emma’s hair, but he, like everyone else, was looking at Charles. “Emma, how's he doing?”

“Better,” she said, with a small, tired smile. “I've got him calmed down, at least.” She shifted her hand from Charles's temple to his cheek and coaxed his head round towards her. “Charles, sugar, look at me. Erik's here now. Come out and say hello.”

“Erik?” His voice was a tearful croak.

Emma glanced back up. _Come on, Erik, say something_.

“Yeah, it's me,” said Erik.

Charles twisted towards his voice. “Hey,” he said, “so it turns out I'm a mutant.” The words juddered from his mind, duplicated. His face stood out chalk white in the darkness. His eyes were wide and barely focused and he was shaking against Emma’s hands. He still looked so small and helpless.

It was a lie.

Charles was a mutant. Not just a mutant, but a telepath capable of things that even Emma couldn't imagine. He’d been the voice in Erik's head, hard and clever and commanding. He had brushed aside Erik resolve as though it had been no more than a spiderweb across his path, he’d wanted control and he’d taken it. Of the two of them, he was vastly the stronger.

Some knight errant. Some damsel in distress.

The thought carried a wave of dizziness with it. Erik felt his knees give and only just stopped himself from collapsing in a heap. Instead he managed to sit down next to Emma on the crumbling stone. Charles automatically, thoughtlessly, crawled into his lap, and Erik, just as automatically, put his arms around him.

“I can’t think,” said Charles. He rested his face into the crook of Erik’s neck. His tears ran down Erik’s skin and soaked into his t-shirt. Erik shushed him, stroked his hair, held him and rocked him.

It felt like saying goodbye. This was the last time he'd ever see his own Charles, his soft, clingy, vulnerable and utterly human boyfriend. That was who he was comforting, in those final minutes before he had to let himself believe what had happened. When he thought of who Charles really was, every touch became empty. All the words became meaningless.

Over Charles’s head, Emma’s eyes bored into him furiously. _You’re lucky he’s in too much of a mess to hear what you're thinking_ , she said. _What the hell is wrong with you?_

_I don’t know,_ he told her, _I don’t know anything anymore._

He adored Charles. He’d been knocked half off his feet the moment they met, he’d been stupidly smitten since their first kiss. Charles made things bright, even when Erik tried to twist them into darkness. He was beautiful. But this wasn’t him.

Still, Erik held on. Just for a while, until the police cars pulled up and the cops stepped out, ready to herd them away. Just until Charles raised his head and looked around at the scene, as though realising where he was for the first time.

“Shit,” he said. “What’s going to happen now?”

That was when Erik let go.

 


	4. Contradictions

If you did something stupid and showy with your powers, you were called in to give a blood sample. That was the rule. Erik was grimly aware, as the needle slid into his arm, that he had just taken stupid and showy to a whole new level.

“You look like you’ve been in the wars a bit,” Mike-the-nurse said sympathetically as the first vial of blood filled up. “Did you get into a fight?”

Erik shrugged. He was scraped and bruised and slightly scorched from scrambling over rocks and dodging fireballs, but there wasn’t a lot wrong with him. “You should see the other guy,” he said.

Mike laughed. He was a nice enough person, just doing his job, which happened to involve taking Erik’s blood for mysterious and probably nefarious purposes. At the end of the day he went home, probably to his wife and two kids and a dog, and slept the sleep of the just. Erik had a fierce desire to hit something.

“One more,” said Mike, clipping another vial onto the end of the needle. The blood dribbled into it, rich and red, as vivid as ink. Erik swallowed, feeling sick, and looked up to find Mike watching him cautiously. “All done,” he said, whisking the tubes out of sight. “Press on this. And I want you to sit there quietly for a minute while I package these up. You look ready to fall over.”

“I’m fine.”

“Humour me.” Mike patted him on the shoulder. “It can’t hurt, can it?”

Erik stared at the floor. It could hurt. Sitting still gave him far too much time to think. It seemed like as soon as he stopped moving he was caught up in last night over again. He could smell the inside of the police car and see the city lights flashing past. There was the chilly, institutional grey of the police station itself, its everyday business bulked out by a small host of teenagers. There was the dreamy disconnection as Mary Jane ran over to hug him and Steve clapped him on the shoulder in his man-to-man way. There was the officer asking questions that he couldn’t remember, and his own voice giving answers so incoherent that they’d sat him down and talked to someone else instead.

He remembered Tony, surprisingly sober, talking very fast to a pair of uniformed cops, and a dark, forceful man at his side who had to be his father, the unbelievably rich and influential Howard Stark, glaring with a level of fierce disapproval that seemed to have the policemen pinned helplessly in place. Erik remembered his mother storming in and alternately raging at him for being irresponsible and threatening to tear out Seb’s eyeballs and roast them. He remembered Charles’s white, wan face as he leaned on Emma, and the feeling of being torn in two, half of him screaming that it should be him being leaned on, and the rest desperately glad that Charles wasn’t touching him. And he remembered the phonecall.

He hadn’t been watching the detective at the time, he’d been staring blankly at nothing, but the shrill of the telephone had caught his attention. He’d seen the woman’s lips move in a terse greeting, and then he’d seen her attitude change. Her posture had stiffened and her face had flicked from irritable to respectful in a second. She’d listened, then looked around the room at her bedraggled collection of human and mutant teenagers. Her eyes had burned into Erik for a moment. Then she had nodded, put the phone down, and plastered a fake smile on her face as she walked over.

Just like that, they were all free to go.

Mike poked his head back into the room. “Alright, Erik, all set. You’ve got a normal appointment in a couple of weeks, haven’t you? I’ll probably see you again then.”

Erik hopped stiffly off the table. “Sure.” He just wanted to get out of there and go home and try to sleep. Last night hadn’t been restful, even after he finally got to bed. He’d kept jerking awake, but if he’d dreamt he didn't remember the dreams.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” asked Mike as he escorted Erik back to the waiting room. “The receptionist can call you a cab if you’d like.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“If you say so. Take care, then,” said Mike. He looked down at his clipboard as he followed Erik out into the waiting room. “Right, who's next? Charles Xavier? Do we have a Charles Xavier here?”

Erik's feet seemed to freeze to the floor.

Charles got up from his uncomfortable chair, shoving a magazine back onto the table. “That’s me,” he said quietly.

“Hello Charles,” said Mike, all warm friendliness, “I haven’t seen you before. Did you just move here?” He flipped through the chart, then looked up, surprised. “Well, look at that, new to your powers at eighteen! You’re a late bloomer, aren’t you? Welcome to your first mutant health check.” He smiled kindly. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to it.”

Charles responded to the smile automatically with a small, tense one of his own. His eyes flicked to Erik. He tried another smile. Erik dropped his head, hating himself. He knew Charles was still looking. He could almost see the expression on his face fading into unhappiness.

Charles’s sneakered feet came into view, and paused briefly. “Hello, Erik,” he said as he and Mike walked past.

“Hello,” Erik muttered. His mind was completely blank, which was probably a blessing, all things considered.

“You know Erik, then?” he heard Mike ask as he led Charles down the corridor.

“We go to the same school,” said Charles. The door of the consulting room closed behind them.

 

***

 

Perhaps Mike had been right, Erik realised, as he nearly killed himself at a red light. Driving might be a bad idea. Apparently some things were even more distracting than having Charles’s hand on his thigh.

Needles and blood, for a start.

Charles was fine, Erik told himself furiously. He was stronger than any of them, he would be absolutely fine.

_What happens if you get too strong?_

He wasn’t going home. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. He needed company, preferably straightforward, mindless company that had nothing whatsoever to do with Charles, Seb or politics. He parked in a side street to consider his options. Not Azazel, unless he wanted an in-depth discussion of his general idiocy and issues. Emma was really pissed at him, which meant, according to all natural laws, that the other girls were too. The humans were, to put it bluntly, too human, and Riptide was... well, possibly evil and certainly unavailable. That left Havok. He pulled out his phone.

Havok answered on the seventh ring. “Jesus, Erik,” he complained, his voice muffled by a yawn, “do you know what time it is?”

Erik smiled a real smile that felt like his first since the NERF gun fight. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

“It is?” Havok said. “Huh. Late night. Well I guess you know that, you were there.”

“Yeah, I was,” said Erik, his smile verging on a laugh. “Can I come over? Watch a movie or something?”

“Oh, sure,” said Havok, with his usual good-natured unconcern. “I figured you’d be hanging out with Charles, but whatever, that’s cool. Come on over. I'll order pizza.”

Erik's stomach growled. He was surprised to find that he was hungry. “Great. No anchovies.” Havok was the one person in the universe who would happily eat anchovies. He’d eat pretty much anything.

The pleasant anticipation of pizza occupied his mind effectively for the rest of the drive, and by the time he arrived he felt much better. There was something comforting about a Sunday afternoon spent watching movies, especially with the familiar I-haven't-done-my-homework feeling provided by the math that he was really not going to bother with. It seemed like any other day.

“Hey, Erik, come in, man, you look like shit,” Havok greeted him cheerfully. He was showered and dressed, which was more than Erik had been expecting. “You want a soda? I'll go grab it. You'd better avoid the kitchen, my parents are in there and they think you're the devil leading me to hell, or something.”

“What?” asked Erik. “Why am I the devil?”

Havok's parents were usually pretty chilled. Besides, thought they’d never mentioned it and Havok wouldn't admit to it, he was pretty sure at least one of them was a low-powered early mutant. For whatever reason, they were more willing than most people to cut him a little slack.

Havok gave him a patient look. “Erik, they had to pick me up from the _police station_ last night. I mean, I know it totally wasn't your fault, but still. Low profile, okay?”

Erik scowled. Of course it wasn’t his fault. Alright, maybe he’d known about Seb and he’d never told anyone. Maybe he’d never warned Charles to be careful. Maybe he’d let himself get swept up in a psychopath’s dreams in the first place. That didn’t make it his fault.

_Oh for god’s sake, stop wallowing,_ he told himself, heading to the lounge to scour Havok's DVD collection _._ He picked out something crappy and flashy involving aliens and explosions and snappy one-liners, and turned the DVD case over in his hands. He couldn't remember if he'd seen it before. Charles didn't like that type of movie, but he let Erik watch them anyway and fell asleep on his shoulder.

Erik suddenly missed him so much it hurt.

There was a sharp crack. He looked down in astonishment at the shattered plastic of the DVD case, then guiltily round at the metal objects in the room. One of the lamps looked a little bent, and he fixed it with much less than his usual control, hoping fervently that he hadn’t done anything to the electronics.

“You find something?” asked Havok, dumping the newly-arrived pizza on the coffee table.

“Yeah,” said Erik. He shoved the DVD into the player and surreptitiously buried the mangled case at the bottom of a pile. The machine flashed reassuringly into life.

Soda, pizza, couch, movie. The world made sense.

“Hey, awesome, pizza!” a voice said behind them. It was a higher-pitched version of Havok’s, and it belonged to gangly fifteen-year-old Scott Summers, with his government-issue visor and his slightly smug air. “Is it peperoni? What are you watching?”

Erik groaned. There was, admittedly, a possibility that Scott had grown up into a nice kid, but more likely he was still the same slimy goody-two-shoes tattletale that he’d been two years before. Erik certainly wasn’t giving him the benefit of the doubt. He shot a hopeful glance across the room.

Havok nodded in sympathy. “Get out,” he told Scott, throwing a pillow at him.

Scott batted it away. “No, I won’t. Why the hell should I?”

“Grown-ups are talking in here. And you get an allowance, you can buy your own goddamn pizza.”

“Jerkoff,” said Scott. His visor gleamed red. “Since when is this your room? You can’t just kick me out, I want to watch TV.”

“Oh, gee,” said Havok, checking his watch, “is it time for Hannah Montana?”

Scott flushed. “Screw you, _Alexander_.”

“Go and whine to mom about it.” Havok got to his feet to loom threateningly over his little brother. “Don’t make me hurt you. You’re, like, two feet high, it wouldn’t even be funny.” He shoved him into the corridor. “Stay the fuck out, Erik's dealing with emotional trauma or some shit like that. We're gonna be hugging and crying in here.”

“Ew,” said Scott, taken aback. “That's really gay.” His nose wrinkled in disapproval before the door slammed in his face.

Havok flopped back down on the sofa. “Bratty little pain in the ass,” he said to nobody in particular. He reached for the remote, then paused, giving Erik a worried look. “You don’t actually want to talk about your emotional trauma, do you?”

Right then there was absolutely nothing Erik would have liked less. “Firstly, I don’t have emotional trauma,” he said. “And secondly, hell no. Also, if you try to hug me I'll stab something through your eyeball.” He shifted slightly further out of range and grabbed for a slice of pizza.

“Dude, I'm not going to hug you,” said Havok. “Your boyfriend's a badass. Seriously, I don’t even know what he’d do to me.”

Erik carefully laid the pizza back in its box. Suddenly he wasn’t very hungry.

Havok gave him an odd look. “Come on, I was kidding. That was a _joke_. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Jesus,” said Havok, “it’s Charles. Little tiny Charles. He never does anything to anyone.”

“Will you just shut up and watch the movie?”

Erik watched as insectoid aliens scuttled across a barren planet and were comprehensively blown to bits by beautiful movie-star kids. Cockroaches, he thought. Burn marks on the walls. A fight for the survival of a species. And, striding through all of it, the badass hero, toting the guns, making the sacrifices. Someone powerful and determined, who was willing to get his hands dirty.

Who the fuck was that supposed to be?

 

***

  
On Monday Erik intended to get to school with no time to spare before class, but he got the timing completely wrong. When he pulled into a parking spot it was fifteen minutes until the bell. He considered skulking in the parking lot, but even he wasn’t quite that much of a coward. Besides, Charles probably wouldn’t even be looking for him.

As it turned out, Charles was waiting for him on the steps.

Despite how small he was, he was quite visible, sitting with Raven in a little space of their own. He raised a tentative hand in greeting. Erik had to force himself to walk over. His feet were being uncooperative. As he approached, Charles stood up, hitching his bag onto his shoulder, and fell silently into step beside him. Raven hung back, twitching to follow. Charles must have asked her not to. It was odd that she’d obey without at least snarling an insult at Erik first.

By common consent the two of them headed round the side of the building to the path leading to the science lab, where there were fewer people to be an audience. They were still school celebrities, and Erik didn’t want anybody watching them.

There was a narrow space between the walls where two buildings met, small enough for some kind of privacy but large enough to keep a safe distance between them. Erik stepped into it and Charles followed wordlessly, tilting his head and blinking in the sudden shade. It was the first time Erik had really had a chance to look at him since it happened. He seemed different. There was something alien about the soft, familiar curves of his face, set into an expression of quiet misery that Erik would once have kissed away.

Their eyes met. Erik scrabbled for words and didn’t find any. He could only stare. Charles stared back and just for a second Erik could recognise him. But only for a second.

The silence stretched until Charles let out his breath and gave a quick, tight nod. “I wasn’t quite sure,” he said, “but now I am. You don’t have to say anything.”

“Don’t have to say what?” asked Erik. He felt hunched up, defensive and wary.

“That you’re breaking up with me. Because of what I did to you.”

Erik opened his mouth, and closed it again.

“I’m sorry,” said Charles. His fingers tangled together, “but I suppose that doesn’t make any difference. It was unforgivable.”

Erik wanted to laugh. _Yes, Charles, you dick,_ he thought, _you had absolutely no right to stop me from fucking up my life. You saved my ass and I hate you for it and I never want to see you again._ Perhaps he really was thinking that, deep down in his weird mess of a subconscious mind. He supposed it would make some kind of twisted sense, more sense than the horrible feeling that Charles wasn’t real anymore. Perhaps it was anger after all, not grief.

Charles must have seen it for himself, inside Erik’s head. He had to know better than Erik, because Erik didn’t know at all.

Charles turned away and walked back to where Raven was waiting. He didn’t move when she hugged him. She put an arm around his waist and steered them both gently towards the school, without a backward glance.

Two figures together. Shapeshifters, both of them.

Erik stood there for a while, paralysed, until the bell rang and conditioning kicked in. He went through the usual routine, dumping things in his locker, arriving late for class, handing in his English essay with its painfully optimistic take on dreams and fate and responsibility. Everything felt distant. In chemistry they were titrating acids, and he only realised afterwards that his lab partner had been Pepper. He hadn’t said a single word to her.

He couldn’t face lunch. Charles would be on the mutant table as usual, but not because of Erik. He was legitimately welcome there, and Erik wasn’t sure he could bear to see it. He hid unashamedly in an empty classroom, got out his neglected math homework and promptly fell asleep.

There was no mystery to it. He hadn’t slept properly in two days. But somehow it was worse, jerking confusedly awake in the sunlit classroom with memories of a dream slithering away from him. There was an echo of Seb’s laughter in his ears, and he knocked three desks over spinning around to make sure he was alone.

_Nightmares_? he thought. _Really? For fuck’s sake._

He flopped back into his chair and told himself to calm down. It was all over, and maybe he’d lost the most important thing he’d ever had, but he’d survived just fine without Charles before. Everything was going to be normal again. Seb couldn’t hurt either of them again, he’d shown what he was capable of and he’d been locked up.

Erik shifted in his chair. A thought was itching at the edge of his awareness, saying that something wasn’t right, it was too easy.

On TV, crime meant bail and a trial and legal stuff, and there hadn’t been any of that. There had to be something, didn’t there?

It couldn’t be over. Not yet.

There was a warning creaking noise. Erik snatched at his power, drawing back before the window frames warped enough to smash the glass. He grabbed for one of the toppled tables and pulled it towards him. Focus. Its metal legs bent calmingly in his hands. He tied one carefully into a knot. Then another. Okay, think it through. Azazel had taken Seb to the hospital, but he’d been breathing and Erik hadn’t hurt him in any other way. So unless he’d been oxygen-starved and brain damaged, he was probably fit to be released already. Probably they’d cut him loose yesterday.

He could be prowling around. He could be right outside the classroom.

Tie another knot.

That was ridiculous. They wouldn’t have just let him go. He was in custody. He’d practically kidnapped Charles and electrocuted Emma and Azazel in front of a hundred witnesses.

And yet none of it really made sense. Erik had nearly killed someone that night and they’d let him off without a blink. That mystery phone call to the police detective that had cancelled everything out and made all the problems go away – had that been for Seb too?

They couldn’t have let him go. Nobody was that stupid.

The bell rang again, which was a wonderful excuse to stop thinking. He left the mangled table abandoned in the classroom. If they didn’t like it they could come and tell him so; it wasn’t like they wouldn’t know who had done it.

In math he handed in his homework a quarter done in an illegible scrawl, and got into no trouble whatsoever. The teacher was all kindness and understanding, telling him not to worry, she knew how stressful the terrible things on the news must be for the mutant students, he could hand it in on Wednesday and if he ever needed to talk about anything he should come and see her.

He’d much rather have been ticked off and given detention.

Then he went to practice and got exactly the same spiel from his coach, and Steve kept giving him sympathetic looks and Azazel tried to say something until Erik just walked away. Why the fuck wouldn’t everyone just leave him alone?

He worked himself until he was utterly exhausted and drove home. He went for another run on shaky legs and staggered to bed and didn’t sleep at all.

 

***

 

After school the next day, sick of jumping at shadows, he looked up the number of the hospital and picked up the phone.

“I want to know about one of your patients,” he told the receptionist. “Sebastian Shaw.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Yes,” Erik lied. “I’m his brother, Robert.”

“Okay,” she said, and he wondered why she’d even bothered to ask. “I’ll just check our records.” There was a pause and a muffled sound of tapping keys. “Here it is,” she said. “Sebastian Shaw. No, he’s not here anymore.”

“He’s been discharged?”

“No, hon, it says here he’s been transferred to a different facility. It doesn’t say which one,” she said, with an impersonal smile in her voice. “That’s all I can tell you. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“That’s fine,” said Erik automatically, “thanks for looking.”

“You have a nice day now.”

“Yeah.”

He hung up and stared at the phone for a little while, then went to talk to his mom, who was tapping away on her computer doing something fiendishly complicated with spreadsheets. She presented him with a cookie from the plate next to her. “Eat.”

“Mom, where’s Seb now?”

“In police custody, I should hope,” she said. “Unless he died of his injuries, which would be no more than he deserves, though for your sake I’d prefer that he didn’t. And I hope you know that I’m still extremely angry with you, you impossibly stupid boy.”

“Where, though?” he demanded. “It’s Seb, where are they going to put him?”

“I suppose they’ll keep him in a mutant detention centre,” she said. “There’s a big one upstate. You know all this, why are you asking?”

“I don’t know all this,” he objected. “None of us know, nobody’s told us anything. Are we going to have to testify? Is there going to be a trial?”

She frowned. “I don’t think so,” she said. She looked at his face and reached up to touch his cheek. “Erik, don’t look so worried. It’s police business now, it’s out of our hands. I wouldn’t be sorry if I never saw or heard of that boy ever again.”

He’d be glad as well, but… where _was_ Seb?

“Yeah. I guess.” He pushed back his chair. “I’m going out, mom, see you later.”

“Eat your cookie,” she told him.  


***

 

The detective wasn’t at all pleased to see him.

“You’re the mutant from the other night,” she said. “What do you want? I really don’t have time for this.”

He’d rather not have been there either, in the dismally memorable grey space, but he needed to know what was going on. “Sebastian Shaw,” he said. “What happened to him? I called the hospital and they said he was transferred to another facility. What does that mean? Did you ship him off to prison?”

“You mean the guy you nearly killed?” Her lip twisted into something that was almost a sneer. “How nice that you care. It’s not my case anymore, go and bother somebody else.”

“Whose case is it then?”

“Not my problem,” she snapped. “Beat it, kid, I have people to incarcerate, and if you stick around much longer you’re going to be one of them.”

Erik went out to his car and sat there fuming, trying not to wreck it. But he hadn’t run out of options. He nerved himself up, started the engine and drove over to Seb’s.

It was odd being back. He’d played in Seb’s yard, hung out there a million times. Seb’s mother had brought him lemonade on hot days and scolded him for cursing in her house. She’d smiled at him and told him, “Don’t let Seb keep you out too late,” and, “Look after yourself, Erik.”

He wondered if she’d had any idea. Then he wondered how much she’d known.

When she opened the door and saw him standing there her face shut down to a polite mask. “Erik,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I want to know what happened to Seb,” he said, “after the…” Accident? Right. “After Saturday.”

She gave him a long, cool look. Just as he’d decided she wasn’t going to answer, her gaze dropped and she shrugged. “He wasn’t badly hurt. They took him away once he was well enough to leave the hospital.”

She made to shut the door, but he caught at the handle and the hinges.

“Who took him away?”

“The police, of course.” Her eyes flicked to the metal. “What else do you want to know?”

The police, Erik thought. But not the detective from before. Seb had become somebody else’s problem.

“Where did they take him?”

“I didn’t ask,” she said quietly. “Erik, I’m very sorry for what he did, but I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“You didn’t ask? You mean you don’t even know what’s happening to him now?”

“Not at the moment, no,” she said, looking at him as though he was being incredibly rude. Which, of course, he was.

“He’s your son,” he said. “Don’t you care?”

“Robert’s my son,” she said. She let out a long breath. “Ella and Katie and Megan are my daughters.”

Robert was two years older than Seb, away at college on a baseball scholarship. The girls were younger. Ella, the little one, just thirteen or fourteen. Erik looked at Mrs Shaw again, really looked at her. She seemed worn down, older than he remembered. Far older than his own mother.

Ella was fourteen, and he hadn’t heard anything about her manifesting. A human, then, like the other three.

“I’m sorry, Erik,” said Mrs Shaw, and she was perfectly calm but there was an odd note in her voice, not pain, but more as though she was trying not to ask him for something. “When we find out what’s happening with Sebastian, I’ll be sure to let you know. Goodbye.”

The door closed in his face. He could have ripped out the lock, but what good would it have done? He didn’t want Seb back. Nobody did. It would be better if he just disappeared. There was really no point in asking any more.

When he woke that night, sweaty and breathless, he was left with bright shards of memory. A dark figure walking away up a marble staircase. Shaking heads and closing doors.

The clock said 1.45. He sat up in bed and turned on the TV with the volume on low. It droned its way through some pointless late night movie, then another.

He couldn’t remember ever being so tired before. He just wanted to get some sleep.

 

***

  
Riptide had been away from school for a week, purportedly with some kind of virus. The following Monday, Erik finally ran into him as the team converged on the locker rooms before practice. Erik took one look, then hit him as hard as he could. No words, no warning, just a startled second of recognition followed by a smashing blow with all his weight behind it.

It was deliciously effective and satisfying. Riptide’s face bruised the hell out of Erik’s knuckles, but it was completely worth it to see him scrabbling on the floor, blood gushing from his nose.

“Fuck!” Riptide scrambled up, and backed away, snuffling through the blood. “Get away from me!”

Every vicious impulse Erik possessed was clamouring to take over, and he took great pleasure in giving in completely. Another stride forward and he had Riptide pinned against the wall, drew back his fist again and slammed it into the side of his head.

“What did you say to Seb?” he demanded, shaking Riptide like a kitten. Metal and party tricks could go to hell, he wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands. “What did you tell him about Charles?”

Riptide shoved furiously at him. Erik got in one more decent slug that sent a jolt of blissful pain through his hand, and then he was caught in a rock hard grip and Steve’s voice was saying “Stop it,” firmly and calmly in his ear.

There’s wasn’t much point in struggling. He tried, but Steve was basically made out of tree trunks and knew every lock in every martial art in the world. Erik wasn’t going anywhere unless he used his powers, which right then would probably have killed everyone in the vicinity. None of it cooled off his temper in the slightest.

“What did you say, Rip?” he snarled, with a futile attempt to hit out again. “Did you beg Seb to do what you couldn’t? Did you tell him to punish Charles because I made you look like the little pussy fuck that you are? Did you?”

Riptide had one hand over his nose and the other defensively out in front of him. “You didn’t give me a choice,” he snapped. “What the hell was I supposed to do? I don’t even know what’s happened to you!”

Erik threw himself forwards again, spitting obscenities. Steve dialed up his grip until it just tipped over the edge into painful.

“Erik, calm down.”

“I will not calm down! Let go of me!”

“You ran off with a human,” said Riptide. “There were more of them every day and nobody cared. Seb was the only one who made sense.”

There was a miniscule twitch to the walls as the steel in the reinforced concrete vibrated. Erik struggled for control, trying not to reach out and slam the studs in Riptides’s jeans through into his skin. “Steve, let me go,” he begged, “I need to smash his face in.”

“I know,” said Steve sympathetically.

“Look, I’m sorry about him going after Charles,” said Riptide, edging back carefully. “I didn’t have a hand in that, I swear to god, he’s a fucking psycho.”

It was almost impossible for Erik not to shout, “ _I told you so!”_ like a six-year-old. He sagged against Steve, caught between violent fury and total exhaustion, not sure which of them was causing the throbbing in his head and the trembling in his legs. One of Steve’s big hands loosened and pressed gently against his chest. The thumb rubbed fractionally in tiny circles, and it must have hit a pressure point or something like that, because his breathing steadied and slowed almost instantly.

“Good, that’s it,” Steve soothed, and his grip became less of a restraint and more of a support as the coach belatedly noticed what was going on and ran over to break things up.

By the time Riptide had been taken away for first aid, when Steve finally set him free, Erik had clocked to the fact that they had an audience. Emma, arms crossed and foot tapping, was standing at the entrance to the hall, flanked by a perfect formation of cheerleaders.

“Darling, some of us are trying to practise,” she said. “We need to talk about your antisocial behaviour.”

Erik glared at her, but he couldn’t be bothered to come up with a retort. Besides, the coach was already leading him off for what turned out to be yet another goddamn sympathetic chat. It seemed to be everyone’s default response. Once Erik had muttered and scowled his way through it, he got sent off to run laps until his temper cooled off.

He did it for the rest of the practice. It wasn’t very effective.

Afterwards he showered and dressed and was about to head to the parking lot when Emma stepped smugly out of the shadows, snagged his arm and said “Erik,” in the dulcet tones that meant she’d already caught him in her web and he just didn’t know it yet.

He made a weak attempt to shake her off. “Jesus, Em, not now.” Didn’t she realise that he needed to go home and die?

“Sorry, sugar,” she said, with no sympathy whatsoever, “but it’s absolutely now. Because the way you’re acting there isn’t going to be a later.”

“What do you want?”

She laughed. “Look at yourself, Erik. Bloody revenges, dark brooding and tragic, star-crossed romance? Normally I would love to let you act out your little soap opera for my amusement, the melodrama is just delicious, but you have a test coming up and you’re not exactly Mr self-control right now, are you?” She raised an eyebrow. “If you don’t want to end up trying to dodge an actual murder charge, I suggest you let me plug up some of those cracks in your psyche first.”

“I’m fine,” Erik snaps. “How many times do I have to say it? Yes, I have a test, but I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Her eyes lingered on his bruised knuckles and the spatters of Riptide’s blood on his shirt.

“Fuck off,” he said. But there wasn’t much use protesting. Long experience had taught him that she would get what she wanted anyway.

“I’m taking you home with me for a bit of TLC,” she told him, tucking her arm into his. “You’ll thank me for it, I promise.”

 

***

 

Trailing Emma’s white car to her house, Erik decided that she probably couldn’t do anything too terrible to him. Then, peering past her into the lounge, he realised exactly why he hated her so much.

_Emma, you bitch,_ he thought fervently.

“Sorry, we were early,” said Raven, bouncing to her feet. “Your mom let us in and – what the fuck is _he_ doing here?” she snarled, scales flickering with fury.

Erik’s gaze flew to where Charles, or his telepathic counterpart, was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He looked utterly frozen, his mouth slightly open and his blue eyes wide and confused. “Emma, why…?” he began.

Raven stormed forward, cutting him off. “Get out, Erik! We don’t want you here, you stay away from Charles. Do you even know what you’re doing to him?” Her hand slapped to his chest and shoved. She was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked, and it set him stumbling back against the doorframe.

Emma interposed herself neatly between them. “Now, now. Erik’s my guest. He’s not here to see Charles, he’s here because I sometimes take pity on the weak and afflicted. He won't be any trouble. He won’t even say a word.” She turned to Charles. “I’m sorry, sugar, but there really wasn’t any alternative.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Charles, flushing more and pressing his lips into that firm, defensive line.

Erik shot a glance at Emma, thinking, _Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work._

If she had some bizarre matchmaking plan in mind she could do it without him.

She smirked. _You think I’m pushing the two of you back together? How cute. No, Erik, not if you got down on your knees and begged._

“You can’t just bring him here,” Raven protested, “you’re supposed to be helping Charles focus. How can he focus like this?”

Charles ducked his head. “It’s alright, I really don’t mind.”

“Well you ought to mind,” said Raven, looking ready to shake him or slap Erik or possibly both. “He’s a total dick, I don’t know why you even…”

“Please,” said Charles, ever so quietly.

Raven heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, don’t go all tragic, it’s pathetic.” She glared at Erik. “I do _not_ know why he lets you get away with this shit, you are absolutely not worth his time. And you look like hell, by the way.”

“Yeah, people keep telling me,” said Erik. He was beginning to realise that they might have a point.

“He needs his beauty sleep,” put in Emma. “Erik, go fix up your hand.”

She shoved him towards the kitchen, and he made his escape willingly. The bruise didn’t hurt too much but if his hand swelled up his mom would ask difficult questions, so ice was a good idea. Besides, it was much nicer in there, with no bewilderingly altered boyfriends and angry teenage girls. It was quiet and white and there was a freezer. He leaned his head against the door, feeling the different metal pieces in it, some quite hot and some very cold, all doing their thing in sensible and predictable ways.

It wasn’t a long term solution to his problems.

By the time he got back, the three of them were settled on the floor around the coffee table. Emma and Raven looked up as he came in, with (respectively) condescension and furious, scathing dislike. Charles kept his head down. Erik avoided looking at him. Instead he shot a longing look at the couch, which had squishy cushions and looked wonderfully fluffy and inviting.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked.

Emma caught the thought, or the look. “Fine, go on, lie down. We’re going to be having a little training session, and you’re going to stay still and quiet and not be a distraction. In the meantime I’ll do some repair work on your bombsite of a brain.”

“Great,” he said, without enthusiasm, but it didn’t sound so bad. He took off his shoes and sank gratefully into the softness. He ached all over. Fighting against Steve’s lock hadn’t been the most sensible thing he’d ever done.

If he concentrated he could tell that Emma was already in his head. There was a tiny spark of connection, barely perceptible. It didn’t feel like she was doing anything at all, but he was perhaps just a fraction more relaxed than he’d been ten seconds earlier. Maybe he could even go to sleep.

Emma nodded in apparent satisfaction. “Good.” She turned back to the coffee table, smiling sweetly. “Ready Charles? Show me how well you can keep your focus with Erik’s mind yowling in the background like a ball of fighting cats.”

Charles gave a little snuffle of laughter. “It does feel like that,” he said. Erik couldn’t help glancing over. He wondered if Charles had been looking at him, and had just looked away.

“He shouldn’t be here, then” said Raven. “He’ll spoil things.”

“I can cope with it.” Charles gave himself a determined little shake. Erik could see him relaxing into his customary composure, until he looked much more like his usual self. “What are we doing today?”

Emma considered. “Emotions, to start with,” she said, “Raven’s and mine. Don’t go anywhere near Erik, please, it’s not a pretty sight.”

“Alright.” Charles touched two fingers to his temple. His nose crinkled up in squirrelish concentration. Erik swallowed uncomfortably.

Raven rolled her eyes. “Do you know how ridiculous you look when you do that hand thing?”

“You’ve told me,” said Charles, “about twenty-seven times a day. I like it, it’s easier like this. Oh, sorry,” he added as Emma tapped her fingers pointedly on the table, “give me a minute. Emma, you’re feeling impatient with me, obviously, but not nearly as much as you’re pretending. And you’re distracted about something, maybe a little worried.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or even a lot worried.” His eyes flicked over to Erik, slightly questioning, before he pulled his gaze away. “Um. And Raven’s feeling angry, mostly. And fond and… tender, I suppose. Affectionate. Protective.” He gave her a sad smile. “Oh Raven, it’s lovely, but I’m really not worth it.”

Raven and Emma exchanged irritated looks. “Yes, you are!” they said in unison.

Charles flushed, shifting with embarrassment. “Now you’re both exasperated,” he said.

“Sweetie, you are just too adorable for words and sometimes it makes me want to shake some sense into you,” said Emma. “Moving on, let’s see if you’ve got any better at reading real thoughts. Though really, I don’t think you could get any worse.”

“It’s not my fault that people don’t think clearly,” Charles complained. “They don’t even use words, mostly. I don’t know how I’m supposed to understand any of it.”

“You just work it out; it’s like learning a language.”

“Languages are really not my thing,” said Charles mournfully.

Erik tried to adjust to the realisation that Charles, despite his terrifying strength, was a fairly incompetent mind reader, but all he could think of was the cartoon French homework with its cutesy little hearts, and Charles chewing on his pen, lying on the desk in a sunny classroom. Once he’d started it was very hard to stop, despite the sharp ache of loss in his chest. He had to blink hard to chase the images away. When he zoned back into the conversation, they’d started another exercise.

“…a number between one and fifty,” Raven was saying. She gazed into Charles’s eyes. “Go on, I’m thinking of it.”

Charles pouted. “You’re not,” he said, “you’re thinking about saying, ‘Go on, I’m thinking of it,’ and several million other things.”

“I am,” said Raven. “Stop stalling.”

There was a pause while Charles concentrated. “Five?” he suggested, without much confidence.

Raven relaxed with an apologetic shake of the head. “Thirty-five. You got one digit though,” she added encouragingly. “That’s not too bad, right?”

Charles looked hopefully at Emma, who was very obviously unimpressed. “I stand corrected, you’ve got infinitely worse.” She flicked her hair with a catty smirk. “Try getting one from Erik. He’s good at thinking in words. He enjoys making sarcastic comments and he likes me to hear them clearly.”

“No I don’t,” said Erik. He wouldn’t be that childish. But maybe he did think in a particular way when he talked to Emma. He’d been doing it for years, he’d never really noticed.

Charles shifted round slightly, and gave an uncomfortable little smile. “I suppose we could try,” he said, lifting his hand back to his temple, “if Erik doesn’t mind.”

Erik did mind. He met Charles’s eyes and was astonished to feel embarrassed heat creeping up his neck. It was ridiculous, he didn’t even have to say a word to Charles, just think of a number, but he was still on edge and self-conscious.

_Seventeen,_ he thought.

Charles’s head jerked up, surprised. “Seventeen!” His face lit up with something close to pleasure. “Oh, that was much clearer.”

Emma nodded briskly. “Good. Now Raven again,” she said, before Charles could say another enthusiastic word. _And you’re just a test subject, Erik, you can relax now_.

There was a slightly jealous huff as Raven’s scowl snapped back on. “Stop smiling, Charles, it doesn’t make him any less of a jerk.” She tugged him back towards her. “Okay, I’m thinking of a number…”

Erik flopped back on his cushions and willed his flush away. He concentrated on listening to the exercises. Somehow Emma’s mysterious mental contact made it easier, keeping his thoughts from flying off on tangents. He managed to sneak a look at Charles without the all-to-familiar sense of mild panic. It felt like an achievement. He was also getting ever so slightly sleepy.

After a few minutes, Charles got his mind back in gear and Emma moved him on to more complicated things. He and Raven started a silent conversation which Erik thought was either about ice-cream flavours or really kinky sex. He wasn’t not quite sure because he could only hear Charles’s side, far too loud, and most of that was, _I didn’t get that, Raven, think it again. Where are you supposed to put the marshmallows?_

Emma looked pained. “Indoor voice, darling,” she said. “And focus; I should think half the street can hear you right now.”

“Sorry.” Charles twinkled at her through his lashes, not sorry at all.

The next exercise involved Raven reading a book and Charles stumbling through the words out loud.

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever… and rich, with a – disposition… no, you’re going too fast. With a comfortable home and a happy disposition…” He touched his head again. “This is hard,” he complained. “Also a disturbing choice of book.”

“Keep going,” ordered Emma.

Charles wrinkled his nose and sighed, glancing back at Raven. “…seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence,” he said dutifully.

They ploughed on through the book, the words falling into a rhythm as Charles got more confident. Erik kept losing the thread. The story became mingled with his drowsy thoughts until Charles often seemed to be talking about something else entirely, odd, stretched out phrases that made no sense but still had meaning. Then, unnervingly, other voices started to join in.

“Such a _rare_ gift,” said one, “I’ll be most interested in next month’s tests.” Erik flinched away, but it was no good. Another was snarling in his ear, “You do belong to me. You always have, and you’re going to learn soon enough.” _You’re not here,_ Erik thought. _I don’t know where you are._ “And I didn’t ask,” a third voice said, tired and uncaring. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

Again, he tried to twitch himself out of reach. He pried his eyes open but he couldn’t force himself awake, just aware enough to see Charles looking at him, mouth slightly open with shock, and Raven’s puzzled face, and behind them… other figures that _wouldn’t go away_.

_Erik, relax,_ Emma said, reaching out smoothly and easing him back into balance. Peace tucked itself around him like a blanket, warm and safe. Seb retreated into the distance and took Stryker with him.

He sank gratefully into the sensation, letting his eyes drop closed again. Sleep hovered, waiting to claim him.

_I didn’t know you could do this._

_I seem to be doing it a lot lately,_ she said, wryly amused. _The two of you are keeping me busy._

_Sorry_ , he thought vaguely, and let himself tumble down into comfortable darkness. Now and then dreams scuttled across his consciousness, but something always kept them from getting too close. And just once he realised that someone else was there with him, hanging warily back.

He was different and not different. There was more to him than Erik remembered. Light flowed through him, not clear, but deep.

_I’ve missed you so much,_ Erik said. He was drifting. It was nice, everything was soft. _Where have you been?_

He reached out, then frowned in distant confusion when Charles didn’t immediately come to him.

Emma’s voice said, _Don’t, Charles. You don’t want to do that._

A moment later it was just another part of the dream.

 

***

 

When Erik next opened his eyes, the drapes were closed and the room was quiet.

“What time is it?” he mumbled. “Where are the others?” He felt groggy with sleep.

“They left,” said Emma. She was in the middle of painting her toenails, in sweatpants and a t-shirt with her hair slightly damp. The combination made her look about Raven’s age. “It’s after nine. I called your mom and told her you’d be late. She’s saving you some dinner.”

She stretched, easing kinks out of her back, and sucked in a breath that might have been a yawn if Emma Frost ever did anything so unladylike as yawning in front of other people.

“You’re tired,” said Erik.

“You’re hard work, sugar. You really were a mess.” She came to sit on the sofa with him, keeping her toes carefully spread, and touched a delicate fingertip to the side of his head. “Better now, I think.”

The more he woke up, the more he realised quite how much better everything was. There was space and calm, and something else, the lingering sweetness that came from good dreams. “Yeah,” he agreed, smiling with relief. “You wouldn’t believe how shitty I’ve been feeling.”

“I would, as a matter of fact,” she said, amused. “I was there. Raven thinks there’s no excuse for what you’re doing to Charles, but having seen inside your head I might accept a plea of temporary insanity.”

The sense of wellbeing took an abrupt nosedive. “I’m not doing anything to Charles,” he said, frowning down at the cushions.

Emma’s perfectly plucked eyebrow quirked upwards. “Don’t be obtuse. Do you know you’ve got him convinced that you hate him for taking over your mind? He won’t even try to learn about that side of his power, he says it’s disgusting.”

“There’s nothing disgusting about it,” Erik snapped. He thought of Charles’s terrified face when Seb’s hand had gripped his throat. At that moment he himself had hated that power to control and hurt, Seb’s power, and his own, and Havok’s and even Emma’s. But that had been just one moment. They weren’t monsters. They weren’t disgusting.

Emma sighed with heavy impatience. “You might want to tell him that. For heaven’s sake, why not? You two were sickening together, I know how you feel about him.”

He tried to find something coherent to say and failed utterly. “You think I don’t want to? I just can’t, Em, it’s not the same.”

“Erik, he’s still Charles,” she said, as though she was talking to a little child.

“No he _isn’t_ ,” Erik insisted. “It’s not just a new trick, like he learned to tap-dance. Look.” He pulled out a handful of coins and scattered them across the table to dance and swirl an inch above the surface. “Look, this isn’t something I can do, it’s something I am. He’s changed, he’s completely different now.”

Emma tilts her head thoughtfully. “I’ll grant you he’s not precisely who he was. But why are you so sure you won’t like the new him?”

“I want the old him. Emma, I don’t think I can ever want anyone else.”

It was possibly the cheesiest line ever uttered outside of a chick flick, and if he’d had time to think about it he'd probably have curled up and died from the humiliation.

“Besides,” he added roughly, “he doesn’t need me anymore. He’s got you. At least you can do something worthwhile.”

Emma rolled her eyes to heaven. “Of course he needs you, you big dumb ape. He relies on you and you’ve left him all alone with some pretty scary stuff.”

Needles and blood and uncertainty. He shrugged crossly. “I can’t save him from any of that, can I?” he said. Of course he couldn’t. He couldn’t even save himself.

“Nobody’s asking you to. Grow up, Erik, you can’t play the fairytale hero forever.”

He started to growl at her, but to his astonishment she forestalled him with a kiss on the cheek and a much gentler tone.

“I’ve done my best,” she said. “Now it’s up to you. Go home, get some more sleep and get your head together.”

It was bizarre; Emma Frost, manipulative bitch extraordinaire, trying to be kind.

_Dreams?_ thought Erik cautiously.

“The amount of work I’ve done on you I’d be surprised if you even twitched once your head hits the pillow.”

He tried to clamp down on the overwhelming rush of gratitude, but she must have seen it.

“Thanks,” he said. “I owe you one.”

She smiled nastily. “Yes, sugar, you do. That’s why you’ll be washing cars for me at the prom fundraiser.” She gave him a proprietorial pat. “Wear as little as possible and try to look decorative. We might as well make use of one of the few things you’re good at.”

Erik groaned. Scheming and shameless semi-nudity. That was the Emma he knew.

 

***

 

Thursday dawned. Erik wished it wouldn’t. It was rapidly becoming his least favourite day. It was a Thursday when this whole horrible mess had started, when those two crazed idiots in California had decided to go on a killing spree and, incidentally, ruin his life. Thursday was the day he had to go to the test centre so Stryker could interrogate him about his _rare_ gift, and tell him how _fascinating_ it was that he could suffocate a person in sheet metal.

Thursday was also chess club day.

He hadn’t intended to go, but the door was wide open. He stopped just long enough for a glance to make sure Charles was there, to be sure it would be safe to go to lunch. But as soon as he looked, he knew something was wrong.

Charles should have been sitting in front of a board, wearing that intense, expectant expression like a cat watching a mouse hole, the odd juxtaposition of his different facets, gentle and assertive, sweet and ruthless. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t even playing. Instead, he was perched on a desk with his feet dangling, morosely watching a match between the tall guy with the silly name and some unremarkable blonde girl.

Erik watched too, furtively, from the doorway. The two players were flirting gently, with a bit of teasing and a lot of giggling. Most of it was too quiet to hear from his distance, but he caught a few half-phrases.

“… not cheating, I’m innocent, how dare you…”

“…you’ve been hustling me all this time…”

“…have not! Okay, you caught me, Charles is telling me the answers in secret…”

There was a series of titters from the other onlookers. Charles’s foot kicked against the table leg.

He was obviously miserable. He hated it. Why didn’t any of them notice?

Erik wrestled with himself, then gave in to what might have been his better nature, or might have been the bit that insisted on picking at half-healed scabs. Either way, it wanted him to say something, but wasn’t supplying a wide range of options.

_Hi,_ he thought.

Charles’s head jerked round. He stared for a moment, then raised a hand in acknowledgement. His lips shaped themselves silently around an answering, “Hi.”

_They’re all dicks,_ Erik told him. He realised with a sinking feeling that Charles was probably going to sit there for the rest of lunchtime, smarting from the tactless comments, without saying a single word.

Whichever part of him it was took over yet again.

_Do you want to play?_

There was a pause, then Charles gave a very small nod.

Erik sidled in. Charles hopped unobtrusively off the desk, snagged a chess set and came over to an unoccupied corner of the classroom, handing the box to Erik.

“Hi,” he said again.

A conversation starting with four repeats of the word, “Hi,” however mental or silent, would have been ridiculous, and Erik wasn’t going to let it happen. “Why weren’t you playing?” he asked instead.

Charles dug at the floor with the toe of his shoe. “No reason. Sue asked me to play. I didn’t want to.”

“You always want to play. What’s the problem with it?”

“Nothing.”

“Charles.”

The mulish look faded. “It’s just… she told me that she knew I wouldn’t cheat.”

“So? You wouldn’t.”

Charles gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I would. I might hear something without meaning to, or I might not even notice I was doing it. I’d really rather just watch.” He glanced down, and added, “Anyway, I’m not sure the others have as much faith in me as she does.”

Erik gritted his teeth. Anyone who could possibly believe that of Charles wouldn’t know human decency if it patted them on the head and gave them a cookie.

“But you’ll play with me,” he said.

Charles met his eyes ruefully. “I don’t suppose you’d like me any less if I cheated.”

Erik felt himself flush. The chess pieces tumbled out of their box and scattered across the desk. He stooped hurriedly to retrieve a couple from the floor, which might have hidden the shamed look on his face but certainly couldn’t erase the feeling from his mind.

“Of course not,” he said. “Help me set up, will you?”

It wasn’t the most tactical of matches. They exchanged a few pieces but neither of them did very much else. Charles seemed distracted, and he distracting Erik as well. It was difficult not to stare, with his blue eyes blinking down at the board and his mouth in slight but constant motion as expressions flickered across his face.

“My mom sends her love,” Erik blurted.

Charles raised his head. “Really? That’s nice. Could you tell her… um…” He stopped, which was lucky because Erik was almost certain he’d been about to say, ‘tell her I miss her.’ And he really couldn’t have told her that.

He shouldn’t have said anything at all, because it set him thinking of mothers, and worse, of large, cold houses and people who deserved to be hit. He didn’t want to know, but he still had to ask.

“What about your parents? How are they taking the whole being-a-mutant thing?”

“Oh, they’re fine with it,” said Charles lightly, “they treat me just the same.”

The next few moves were played out in silence, save for the click of the pieces and the hum of voices in the room. Charles was playing sloppily. Erik took his second knight, then, almost guiltily, his queen. Charles picked up a pawn, hesitated, put it back down again, and shoved his rook a couple of squares. “Check,” he said.

Erik shot him a questioning look. He scanned over the board again just to make sure, but there was no changing it. “Check,” he said, taking the rook with his queen, “and mate in two.”

It was a weird anti-climax, but oddly cheering. The game was over, and they’d both got through it pretty much intact.

“Oh,” said Charles, blinking. “Oops.” He smiled sheepishly and tipped his king onto its side. “Well that was embarrassing.”

“At least we know you’re not cheating.”

“ _We_ do,” said Charles, his smile widening shyly. “Unfortunately everyone else will think I threw the game to put them off the scent.”

Erik faked a scowl. “Are you saying they won’t believe I beat you fair and square?”

“That,” said Charles seriously, “is exactly what I’m saying.”

“I hate you,” Erik told him, but his smile faltered. Some hidden part of his mind fluttered into life, repeating, over and over, _I love you. I loved you._

It wouldn’t shut up. He knew Charles could hear.

“I’m sorry,” Charles whispered, and Erik couldn’t bear it, seeing that devastated look on his face when it wasn’t his fault. It was Erik’s fault, all of it. He wanted to get out of there, he could practically see himself stumbling to his feet, knocking into the desk and sending chess pieces flying as he ran out of the room.

But it was time to grow up.

He stood up slowly. The chess pieces went back into their box, the cardboard chessboard folded in half. He put it all back in the cupboard and turned to look at Charles, standing uncertainly by the desk.

_Come on,_ he said, in thoughts, not words, _I’ll walk you to class, if you like._

***

 

“All done,” said Mike cheerfully.

Erik pressed the cotton wool against his arm. It wasn’t all done, of course. It was never all done, he’d be back again next month, and the one after, and the one after that. The sensation of metal sliding under his skin had become so familiar, the sharp, brief sting and the elegant perfection of the needle itself. Erik watched grimly as Mike disposed of the used tip and collected up the tubes of blood.

Or at least he pretended to watch Mike. He was really watching the door.

“Ah, Mr Lehnsherr.”

Fucking Stryker.

Stryker strolled in, clipboard in hand, all geniality.

“Well, I’m once again impressed by these results,” he said lightly. “Another dramatic improvement. Not surprising though, I think, given your recent demonstrations. I must say, I wish I could have witnessed that.”

Yes, obviously he’d have enjoyed watching two teenagers trying to kill each other. The sick fuck.

“I’m done with the samples. Can I go now?” said Erik, as Mike bustled out with his horrible red tubes.

Striker closed the door behind him. “I’ll just take up one more moment of your time,” he said, good-natured but implacable. “I wanted to talk for a moment about your little altercation with Mr Shaw. After all, I don’t think many people could kill a young man of such power.”

“I didn’t kill him!” Erik snapped, shocked. “He’s fine.”

Stryker laughed gently. “When I say ‘could’, I meant that you possessed the means and the determination.” He placed his clipboard on the desk, tilted slightly away. “And perhaps the motive.”

“It wasn’t a motive,” said Erik, half angry, half distracted by craning his neck to look. The numbers were even more depressing than last time. “I didn’t have a choice.” He could just leave, get up and walk out of the door. He should do that. “I-”

“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t,” Stryker interrupted casually. “No, the situation was forced on you, and you acted as anybody would have in trying to protect your friend. But the fact remains that you were entirely prepared. You had a contingency plan.” He smiled. “I applaud your forethought.”

“Yeah,” said Erik uncertainly. As much as he hated to admit that Stryker could ever, in any universe, be right about anything, it was a fairly accurate way of putting it. He hadn’t intended to go out and kill Seb, but he’d made sure he knew _how_ to, just in case. As it turned out, it had been a pretty good move.

“Yes,” said Stryker, “a very imaginative and effective contingency plan. Though it’s much better that Mr Shaw is now in the hands of people equipped to deal with the situation.”

“The police,” said Erik, though he was dubious. Really, nobody was particularly equipped to deal with Seb.

“The proper authorities,” Stryker corrected smoothly.

Erik’s neck prickled. A spokesperson, Emma had said, saying nothing at all. Him. Dr Stryker.

What proper authorities?

“Do you know what happened to Seb?” he said, and then reminded himself that he didn’t need to ask humbly, he was demanding something he had a right to hear. “I want to know,” he said. “Nobody will give me a straight answer. What have they done with him?”

Stryker tapped his finger thoughtfully on the metal tray of instruments. “Tell me, Mr Lehnsherr, what would you have done with him?”

His face hung there, expectant and curious, with its big teeth and its slimy skin. Erik’s anger stuttered into confusion and he had to look away.

“What has that got to do with it?”

He knew perfectly well what he would have done. He’d only had one chance, and in the heat of things… no, he wouldn’t have wasted it. Not when Seb could have come back and hurt him again.

“There are ways of dealing with criminals,” said Stryker musingly, “and ways of dealing with threats. You can attempt to quantify and reduce the risk, or you can attempt to eliminate it. You can attempt rehabilitation, or deterrence, or even, shall we say, neutralisation.” He tapped his fingers again, making a pattering rhythm of tiny, sharp noises. “There are many options. Do you have an opinion?”

A line of cold fear ran down Erik’s back and settled in his stomach. _Neutralisation._ Stryker was insinuating something Erik couldn’t even put into words. It couldn’t be true, the world just didn’t work like that.

“Yeah, I have an opinion,” he said. “I think people shouldn’t disappear.”

Stryker nodded sadly. “This is a very imperfect world, is it not? Things happen that we wouldn’t wish to happen, children fry innocent classmates with laser beams, young men decide to start a new life outside the law. Sometimes these things can be predicted, and it is possible to nip them, as they say, in the bud. And sometimes one cannot be sure, and can merely, ah… plan for the contingency.”

“What do you mean? What contingencies?”

Stryker nodded sagely. “A good question. Take California as an example, seventeen dead in an afternoon, could that have been predicted? Perhaps not, but something of the sort might have been expected to happen.” Tap, tap, tap on the tray. “An event like that would send ripples out across the world. It affects every mutant and every human, some of them a little, and some, like your friend Mr Shaw, a very great deal. There are ways to manage and contain these things, if they’re planned for. It pays to be prepared, doesn’t it? Prepared and informed, just as you were.”

Erik scrabbled to comprehend it all. “You mean you plan for people like Seb and those two…?”

“Oh no, you misunderstand me,” said Stryker with yet another light, amused laugh. “It’s just an illustration. But of course, you know all about contingency plans for dangerous mutants. I wonder – and this is purely hypothetical, of course – could you fault anyone for doing what you did yourself?”

Prepared and informed. Erik looked around the test centre, at the clipboards and the syringes, and felt a desperate urge to wrap his arms around himself and back away. “I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t plan to, I didn’t mean…”

Stryker smiled. “Don’t sell yourself short, Mr Lehnsherr. You have an excellent strength of purpose, and the abilities to back it up. I believe I could use someone like you.” The smile grew wider. “Come and talk to me about it in five years. Perhaps you’ll find that we want the same things.”

“No,” said Erik, through a throat that was almost too dry to choke out the words, “we really don’t.”

“Five years, Erik. But I won’t detain you any longer.” He held out a hand. Erik couldn’t have brought himself to touch it, even if he’d wanted to. Stryker, unruffled, just smiled. “It’s been a pleasure, as always,” he said. “Have a safe journey home.”

 

***

 

There were three figures waiting outside.

“Hey,” said Azazel, “well done, you didn’t break anything.” Then he caught sight of Erik’s face and his expression changed. His tail flicked uneasily. “It wasn’t good in there, was it?”

Emma, who seemed icier than usual, gave Erik a piercing look. “I don’t think so, darling, no.”

Charles didn’t say anything, just peeled himself away from the wall where he’d been leaning and stepped a little closer.

Erik’s chest was still tight, his breathing shaky. “What are you guys doing here?” he asked.

“We wanted to make sure you were okay,” Azazel said, “but as it turns out, you’re really not.”

Erik shook his head. “Fuck. What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?” said Azazel.

Emma’s sharp eyes wouldn’t leave his face. “Sugar, you’d better tell us what happened.”

“Stryker, he…” Erik began. Then he stopped. What the hell was he supposed to say? Stryker hadn’t told him anything, it had all been insinuation and creepiness… but if any of it was actually real then it was unforgivable. He had to _do_ something about it. If it was real then he had to tear the world apart.

He imagined himself just blurting it out, that Seb’s crazy conspiracy theories suddenly seemed a lot more plausible, that maybe he really had been living in a fantasy world pretending that nothing was wrong. Maybe there were injustices to rage against, to be up in arms about, but even if they fought back there might be a _contingency plan_ for that.

It sounded crazy, it had to be crazy. If he told them, they’d probably just say he was being stupid. But they might not, and then what the fuck was he supposed to do?

“Nothing happened,” he said. “He just freaked me out, Stryker, he was being weird and it freaked me out. Look, forget it, I want to go home.”

“Erik,” Azazel began.

“What? I’m tired, you know what the tests are like.”

_Erik, Do you think I’m stupid? It’s not just that,_ Emma told him. _Let me see._

“No,” Erik said aloud. He pictured a door closing in her face. _Stay out. It’s none of your business what I’m thinking_.

He couldn’t have stopped her, but he made his mind as unwelcoming as he could.

Emma and Azazel exchanged glances. They weren’t giving it up, they were going to try to make him explain, or keep on asking if he was okay, meaning, _there’s something really wrong_ , or just give him that look, like they were waiting for him to explode and smash something, which was actually a very tempting idea.

“I’m going,” he said again. If they said a single word…

“Great,” said Charles.

Erik frowned. “What?” he said, momentarily thrown. “What’s great?”

“You’re going home,” said Charles. “That’s great, can you give me a ride?” He picked up his bag, slung the strap over his shoulder and looked up at Erik expectantly.

“Why?” Erik asked stupidly.

“I left my bike at school.” Charles gave him a quizzical look, as though surprised at the question. “It’s out of Emma’s way to drop me off. Would you mind?”

Erik really wouldn’t have minded anything, so long as it meant he escaped from the interrogation. “Sure,” he said hurriedly. Azazel started to say something else, and he heard Emma’s concerned, _Erik_ , again, but ignored them both. “Thanks for coming down, guys,” he told them, “I’ll see you at school. Charles, let’s go, I’m running late.”

With a mental flick he set his car engine throbbing into life, and strode across the parking lot, Charles trailing after him and looking round to wave.

He managed to drive without crushing the car. That was a bonus.

Charles sat quietly next to him at first, fiddling with the strap of his bag and staring out of the window. Then he said, “Thanks for taking me. Emma doesn’t seem to mind driving me around, but I think it’s nice to give them some alone time.”

“Yeah,” said Erik, still concentrating on watching the road, cursing Stryker and trying not to squish them both. Then he replayed what Charles said, puzzled. “What? Who?”

Charles smiled impishly. “Emma and Azazel. I think it’s getting serious, and they don’t need a third wheel.”

“What the hell?” said Erik. He gave Charles a brief, incredulous glance before dragging his attention back to the traffic. “Bullshit. There’s no way.”

“I’m pretty sure,” said Charles. “I think he kind of likes being bossed around, and she likes bossing. Really likes it.”

This brought to mind images that Erik never wanted to think about. Ever. “I’ve heard some pretty disturbing shit today, Charles, believe me,” he said, “but that tops the list.”

“I think it’s sweet.’

“Yes,” said Erik, “you would.”

They fell back into a surprisingly comfortable silence. Erik’s mind tried to float back to Stryker, but an image popped up of Emma, in her usual white. Except this time it was leather. Azazel did have a tail, Erik mused. Maybe she could use it as a… oh dear god. No. He needed to wash out his brain.

He shot Charles a glare. “You know I’m going to be thinking about that every time I see her from now on.”

Charles met the glare with a look of demure innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.” Then he laughed at Erik’s exasperated expression. “Okay, maybe I do. I’m sorry, try to forget it.”

His eyes were sparkling. He looked happier than he had in days. Erik grinned at him, and for a moment he didn’t have to hold on quite so hard to his fraying control. It was awkward, but just having something to smile about and someone to joke with made everything a little better.

Part of it was an act, of course. Charles was obviously doing it on purpose, because he always did everything on purpose. But Erik was okay with being manipulated into being happy. Besides, he realised, with a little spark of relief, he didn’t have to think of it as manipulation if he didn’t want to. He could think of it as kindness, and if he did then he ought to be really fucking grateful.

It was almost a disappointment to pull up to the oversized gate of the Xavier mansion. He shut off the engine and flicked open Charles’s door for him. Charles sighed, bit at his lip, then gave Erik a lopsided smile. He scrambled out, slightly awkward and off balance as he took the weight of his bag.

“Thanks,” he said.

Erik watched, suddenly tense, as Charles took an apprehensive little glance over his shoulder, smiled again and turned away towards the mansion, with its impressive yellow stonework and dark windows and its total lack of warmth.

Charles shouldn’t have to live there, not all alone. His bitch of a mother, Erik thought, fists clenching. How could she care so little? She had no excuse.

Not like Seb’s mother had.

The metal around him creaked, ever so slightly. If people were unwanted and easily forgotten… If people were strong, and made others afraid…

No. Not Charles.

“Wait!” He was out and on his feet before he knew it, calling over the top of the car. “Charles, wait. Are you going to Emma’s house tomorrow?”

Charles paused and turned around. His small figure was almost lost against the huge house, but Erik could see the tilt of his head and the cautious set of his shoulders. “Yes,” he called back, “why?”

“Come and have dinner at mine afterwards,” said Erik, all in a rush before he could change his mind. “My mom would love to see you.”

Charles paused. It looked like he was going to say no. Erik swallowed, nervous. It was important. “Will you?” he called again.

There was another, longer pause. Then Charles nodded, just once, waved, and walked away towards the house.

  



	5. The new normal

At five minutes to six the next evening, Erik was upstairs hunting through his wardrobe in a state of panic. He was wearing the wrong shirt.

It was a soft black V-neck and it was, objectively, a nice shirt. It looked good and it felt good and there was nothing wrong with it except for the rather large drawback that it was one that Charles had chosen for him. Charles absolutely loved it. He liked to snuggle his face against it, or sit and stare dreamily at it from across the room with his chin in his hand and complain when Erik spoiled the effect by getting up and kissing him.

The shirt was absolutely not okay for that night. But he’d just showered after a run and what he’d worn to school was really gross, and everything else was in the laundry except for the hideous yellow and brown check thing his aunt had given him.

He was this close to going down bare-chested.

And then the doorbell rang and he was out of time and out of options. Maybe, just possibly, Charles wouldn’t notice.

He made it to the head of the stairs in time to catch a glimpse of Emma, who gave him her patented piercing stare around the closing door and shot the thought, _Don’t fuck this up,_ into his brain loud enough to make him stumble and nearly break his neck. But when he righted himself, he forgot all about her. All his attention was taken up by the scene below.

It looked like a homecoming. They were fussing over Charles. Even Erik’s calm, undemonstrative dad delivered him a pat on the shoulder and his mom had both arms round him. She was murmuring and petting as though he was a kitten just back from the vet that needed extra love and attention. Charles hugged her back until she let him go with a kiss on the cheek and turned to yell, “Erik, get down here!”

Erik realised he was standing deadly still about halfway up the stairs, watching like a stalker, so he went down, and Charles looked up and they both stared.

It was all the fault of the fucking shirt. Charles’s expression went dazed and painful, and the worst possible thing Erik could have done at that moment was to complicate matters by hugging him, but he had absolutely no choice. His mother was watching.

“Hey,” he said, holding out his arms.

“Hi,” said Charles, and stepped forward. He fit into the embrace, just as he always had, at the perfect height to rest his head on Erik’s shoulder, the perfect height for Erik to breathe in the scent of his hair.

It wasn’t the same. Charles held on just a little too tight, as though someone was trying to pull him away and he didn’t want to go. Emotions bled through the thin layers of cloth and skin between them, hints of distress and loneliness and fear so familiar that Erik couldn’t tell which way they were flowing. Charles had always had a brightness about him, but there was a sense of something deeper and brighter unfurling within him. It was something that didn’t belong in Erik’s arms.

Erik let go. It was that or burst into tears.

Real life reasserted itself. His dad headed back to the kitchen. His mom shooed them both away.

“Dinner will be a little while, so you boys get out from under our feet. And you can have some cookies in the meantime, Charles. Erik, don’t spoil your appetite.”

Charles’s eyes held an expression of shy surprise which dissipated as his face lit up hopefully. It lit up even more when she fetched a plate of freshly baked double-chocolate-chip cookies.

They were his favourite. Erik had casually mentioned this.

They settled on the couch with the plate between them.

“So, um, thank you for inviting me over,” said Charles. “It’s really nice to... it’s really nice.”

It was really nice. It was like it had been in the car, seeing Charles happy, and having someone to talk to. There were a million things Erik wanted to say. He wanted to say, “I should have asked you before, I hate thinking of you all alone in that house,” and, “Thank you for saving my sanity yesterday,” and, “How badly have I hurt you?” and, “By the way, an evil secret agency is trying to recruit me.”

“Have a cookie,” he said.

“Thanks.” Charles took a cookie and smiled at it in a way guaranteed to fill its little doughy heart with feelings of self-worth. “I love these,” he said. “And they’re still _warm_.” He poked at one of the semi-molten chocolate chips with approval and popped the resulting chocolaty fingertip into his mouth to be sucked clean. Then he bit into the soft cookie with a little happy moan.

Erik looked away hastily and reached for a cookie of his own. Charles slid the plate away along the sofa. “They’re mine,” he said. “She gave them to me. You’re not supposed to spoil you appetite.”

“She always says that,” said Erik, leaning forwards and reaching again.

Charles pulled the plate protectively onto his lap. “She probably means it, then,” he said, and bit into another cookie.

Reaching into Charles’s lap was a bad idea, but the cookies smelled good enough to risk it.

“No,” said Charles, laughing, “ ** _MINE_** _._ ”

Erik sat back abruptly. He didn’t want a cookie. They were Charles’s cookies.

It only lasted for a second, then his mind snapped back into focus and everything was normal, except for a little avalanche of cookies sliding off the plate and scattering themselves on the couch, and Charles, who was sitting with his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open, looking completely horrified. And not just looking. Erik could feel the horror fluttering between them like a butterfly caught in a jar, battering and bruising its wings against the glass.

“Oh god,” said Charles, “Erik, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

Erik found himself a more shaken by Charles’s reaction than the act itself. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “My mom will be flattered you like them that much.”

“Please don’t…” Charles stuttered. “Truly, I’m sorry.” The room seemed to fill with a haze of guilt. Charles looked around, anywhere but at Erik. “I’ll go,” he said, already halfway to his feet. “I should go.”

Erik caught him by the wrist. “Come on. Seriously, it’s no big deal. Stop freaking out.”

“No, I…” He tried to twist away. “Erik, I didn’t mean to.”

“I know that! Will you stop?” Erik pulled him back down. “It was an accident, it’s normal to lose control now and then.”

What the hell had Emma been thinking? Why hadn’t she explained this stuff to him? Why hadn’t she at least told Erik things had got this bad?

Why did he never listen to her?

The barrage of emotions in the air swirled in confusion. “You’re not angry?” said Charles. His hand twitched towards Erik, then drew back. He took a breath, trying to calm down, settling composure back around himself. “I’m sorry,” he said, more slowly, “I just... I didn’t mean to. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t like it.”

“You hardly did anything. You made me not want a cookie for one second.”

“You’re not angry,” said Charles again.

“Of course I’m not angry! I break things all the time, you’ve seen it.”

Charles dropped his head. “Yes, of course,” he said blankly. “I know that. I don’t know why I’m making such a fuss.” He sounded quite calm, but he still wouldn’t look Erik in the eye. Instead, he was focused on the scatter of broken cookies across the cushion. He started picking up the pieces and stacking them back on the plate. “I’ve got crumbs all over your couch,” he said.

“What? What the hell does that matter? Forget the crumbs.” Erik shifted along the couch, brushing the mess roughly aside. His jeans were going to be studded with chocolate chips, but the only thing that mattered right then was to stop Charles retreating completely behind that aching disinterested composure. “Talk to me.”

Charles twitched away. The emotions surged again, welling up behind his impassive eyes. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t particularly want to be a mutant, but I’ll get used to it.”

“Being a mutant is good,” said Erik, trying not to think about what happened to mutants, and the tests and the blood. Instead, he thought of how it felt when the metal hummed in his mind, and the freedom of flinging that part of himself into the sky, or feeling the shape of the earth around him. “See? Can you feel it? You should be proud of what you can do.”

“You don’t know what I can do,” said Charles. The words came out quiet and unwilling. “It’s not nice. I could force you to do what I wanted. I might be doing it now and you wouldn’t know. You should be scared of me, Erik, I’m not safe.”

“Scared of you?” said Erik. Havok had said it: _Little tiny Charles. He never does anything to anyone._ Charles might have become the most powerful mutant Erik had ever met, but that didn’t change the fact that he was pretty much incapable of even mildly questionable acts like lying about late homework, or talking on his cellphone in a library. “I’m not scared of you, you idiot. It’s nothing to do with power.” He paused, wondering. “Are you scared of me?”

“No,” Charles mumbled, “but you’re you.”

Erik blinked. He was pretty sure that he was an unpredictable, mistrustful, paranoid, violent and generally fucked-up person. “Well you’re you,” he said. “You’re not going to do things like that. It’s not who you are.”

“I don’t know who I am,” said Charles, still small and subdued. He lowered his head. His hand started to pick at the scattered cookie crumbs again. “I’m certainly not who I used to be.”

“Yeah,” said Erik, feeling something inside him shift uncomfortably, “you’re different now. But I’ll never be scared of you.”

It was quiet in the room, with just the two of them half sitting, half sprawled on the couch. Charles was slowly relaxing, and the movement brought his knee against Erik’s. Neither of them drew away. Charles was warm and alive, and beneath the confusion that brightness was slowly unfurling again.

Erik’s heart rate increased by a notch.

They sat there for a while longer, with Erik thinking purposefully vague thoughts. Then Charles said “I didn’t do anything permanent to you, did I?” He didn’t really sound worried, but there was still a note in his voice that wasn’t quite right.

Erik smiled. “I’m fine,” he said. “Look.” He demonstrated by taking a crumbled cookie from the plate and biting it in half. “They’re not yours.”

“Don’t eat them, Erik, they’re covered in fluff,” said Charles, managing an answering smile.

“Yeah, but they’re still good.” Erik held the other half cookie in front of Charles’s face. “Here, try it.”

Charles wrinkled his nose, his smile becoming less tentative, more real. “No, thank you.”

“It’s really tasty.”

“I am aware, but it’s also really fluffy.”

Erik, heart thumping harder, touched the cookie to Charles’s lips. “Go on,” he said.

With a look of suspicious disapproval, Charles opened his mouth to take the tiniest nibble. “There,” he said, “are you happy? I don’t know why I do these things for you.”

Erik was distantly aware that the answer to that was, “You shouldn’t do anything for me, I don’t deserve it,” but he was distracted by the line of crumbs along Charles’s bottom lip. Just as he was beginning to lean forward, his mother called them in to dinner.

  
***

  
They were both happier, after that dinner, but happiness was a fragile thing. You had to work at it, Erik’s mother always said, no matter how good things were. And when something went wrong you had to work even harder.

When the next thing went wrong, which was almost immediately, Erik was proud of how he dealt with it. He couldn’t have done it a month earlier.

He called Charles on Sunday, a yet another tentative exploration of their newfound solidarity.

“Come out to the quarry today,” he said. “We’re playing ball.”

“I can’t,” said Charles. “I have to leave for the test centre in an hour or so.” He sounded mildly disappointed, as though was a minor irritation.

Suddenly the world seemed much less wonderful. “Again? Didn’t they test you last weekend?”

“Yes, they did,” said Charles. Erik could practically hear his nose wrinkling with dissatisfaction. “Dr Stryker says he wants to see me once a week to begin with.”

As always, the name sent a chill down Erik’s spine. Obviously Stryker would handle Charles’s tests, there had never been any question, but weekly? It was too much, it wasn’t reasonable. Stryker could keep his damn hands off.

“Erik, don’t get upset,” said Charles, anticipating his thoughts even without telepathic contact. “It’s nothing. I know you don’t like it, but I really don’t mind. Honestly, you don’t need to worry about me. I’m happy to go.”

_“Happy?”_

“Well, maybe not happy. But it’s better that they know about me properly,” said Charles, sighing. “It makes me feel a bit safer, actually. Sometimes it feels like I’m some kind of deadly explosive device, and honestly, if there were a spare nuclear warhead lying around I’d be rather angry if nobody knew where it was or what it could do.”

There was a silence. Erik swallowed carefully before he spoke. His voice came out quite steady. “Okay. That’s good. You know, that you don’t mind. I’m glad.”

“Erik?” said Charles. “I didn’t mean… Erik?”

The cell phone felt tiny and slippery in his sweaty hand. He drew his knees up to his chin, rumpling the bedsheets with his feet. It was nothing. It was an off-the-cuff comment that didn’t matter at all. Charles shouldn’t have to be scared. They shouldn’t fight, not when everything was almost okay.

“Look, how about later? I’ll get my homework done this afternoon and we can hang out after dinner.”

“Okay. Yes,” said Charles, “that would be lovely. I’ll see you later.” He stammered a little over the last words. “Um... bye, then.”

“Take care,” Erik told him, and hung up the phone.

His powers were growing all the time. If he’d wanted to, he could have pulled a building apart. Talk about explosive devices.

He turned on the TV to take his mind off it. That was probably his biggest mistake of the day.

_And today’s main story, California prison authorities have confirmed the death of 15-year-old Edward Grant, the perpetrator of the massacre at St Mark’s High School. Grant committed suicide last night in prison, using his own mutant ability._

The story wasn’t really about the suicide. It was all photographs of the victims, smiling teenagers, some Erik’s age, some younger than Raven, and their names, and how they died. Max Arnold, a sophomore, played trumpet in the band, killed by a blast to the neck. Lin Cho, a senior, headed for the Ivy League, and her younger sister. Three juniors from the same chemistry class, running desperately down the corridor, shot in the back.

And Edward Grant himself. It was such a tidy end, and surely if anyone deserved death in the world, it would be him. A monster, a killer with a weapon built into his DNA. A fifteen-year-old boy, all alone in his cell.

That wasn’t how it worked. It wasn’t right.

If he could have just believed the news report, he wouldn’t have been sorry. If Seb had simply been dead, he wouldn’t have been sorry. But, _they were killed, in secret, without trial,_ Seb had said. Had Edward Grant killed himself in jail or had he already been dead when Seb was giving his monologue? And if he’d died in jail, was it really suicide?

And where _was_ Seb?

Stryker and his insinuations. Seb and his accusations. If they had left Erik alone he wouldn’t have had to wonder, he could have just... gone on pretending.

But if it was true it was unforgivable.

Erik rested his face in his hands, looking out through the bars of his spread fingers. He had so much to lose. He had his parents, and a future. He had Charles.

_“First they came for the mutants,” said Seb, sing-song, “and I didn’t speak out because I was in fucking high school, Erik? Is that how it’s going to be? You were always afraid.”_

“Fuck you, Seb,” he said aloud. “You bastard. You did this to me.”

 

***

 

He went out to play ball with the guys. The quarry was just the quarry, not sinister or terrifying. It was just dirt and junk and weeds. The car he’d tossed around was smashed up over to one side where it fell. There was no sign of Seb’s metal shell and he didn’t look for it.

Quite a bunch of them showed up, even Jubilee and Raven. Tony was as wildly enthusiastic and recklessly self-destructive as ever. He’d swapped his homemade laser for a cyborg-like glowing contraption sprouting wires all over.

“It’s a transistor. Or a repulsor. Or a Stark-o-matic killinator, I haven’t decided,” he declared. “Anyway, it’s awesome.”

There was a general ripple of laughter at his expense, but it turned out that it really was awesome.

Erik’s team won, which was cool considering that he wasn’t really sure who was on it or what the current rules were. He got home tired and gritty, took another shower and ploughed through his homework without really thinking about it. He couldn’t help brooding over the news but it was such a constant state by then that he could pretty much go along as normal, with the worry tucked away deep down where he didn’t notice it any more.

Charles turned up on the doorstep after dinner, pale and nervous, and looked utterly astonished went Erik greeted him with a quick hug.

“Come on in. How was the test?”

“Um, fine,” he mumbled. “Erik, I think I said something really stupid before, I didn’t mean... I just meant me, not anyone else.” It was all tumbled, painful earnestness. “I only meant that I think someone ought to know what I can do. Otherwise it’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

They were all dangerous. If it was one of them, it was everyone.

But he didn’t say that. He didn’t get angry. He and Charles went up to his room. They argued over the scientific implausibilities in Erik’s movie collection, and made up some improbable weekend activities for Charles to write in his French homework. Erik watched Charles’s lips and hoped Charles wasn’t reading him too deeply.

It had been a good day. He wasn’t going to spoil it.

They didn’t get to take that away from him too.

 

***

  
They were at Emma’s house, clustered around the coffee table. The lesson was almost over, and Charles was sitting back on his heels, expression sliding from wariness to defiance. He’d obviously known what was coming, had been stewing over it behind his shields for a while.

“No,” he said again. “I told you I don’t want to, and I don’t see why I should.” His tone said that the subject was closed. He was already reaching for his bookbag, tugging it out from under the table and stashing away his notes. “Erik, are you giving me and Raven a ride home?”

Erik glanced at Emma and pulled an exasperated face. “Ten more minutes,” he said. “Then we can go.”

“Fine, I’ll take the bus,” said Charles. “Come on, Raven.”

Raven gave an apologetic shrug. She’d been staunchly on Charles’s side to begin with, but she had wavered the previous day after he’d accidentally pulled his cookie trick on her in some silly squabble over which t-shirt to buy. Charles had carried the weight of guilty misery around for the rest of the day, and none of them wanted to see that again.

“You could just give it a try,” she suggested. “It’s not like Emma actually wants you to control anyone.”

“Charles, sugar, stop making a fuss,” Emma added sweetly. “It’s a tiny little thing, even I can do it.”

The hairs rose on the back of Erik’s neck. He was suddenly horribly aware that something was crawling over his hand. Slowly and unwillingly he cast his eyes downwards, and found himself looking at a gigantic spider covered in white bristles, its fangs dripping with implausible but terrifying yellow poison. He yelped, flailed and batted at it with his other hand.

“Jesus Christ, Emma!”

The spider flew across the room and dissipated into thin air.

“What happened?” Raven asked, staring.

Emma shrugged elegantly. “You see? It’s nothing. I just placed a little image in his mind.”

Erik glared at her. He could still feel the pressure of its disgusting furry feet. It was hadn’t been the most encouraging example. In fact, it might have been the worst example possible for Charles. Emma’s patience was apparently wearing thin. She was catching Charles’s mood, and with two telepaths on edge the room was not a pleasant place to be.

Raven giggled nervously, but Charles scrambled to his feet, shouldering his bag. “Raven, are you coming?” he said. “We’re finished here.”

 

***

  
Erik drove them home anyway. Charles and Raven chattered for the first half of the drive but after they dropped her off the silence was uncomfortable all the way to the turn into Charles’s driveway.

“I’ll walk you in,” said Erik, trying to sound normal. He didn’t want to go home with both of them irritated.

Charles shrugged. “If you like,” he said, offhandedly enough that Erik had to supress another flash of irritation.

As they crunched along the gravel, Erik made one last-ditch attempt at conciliation. “I just think you ought to learn about it.”

Charles stopped walking. “I know why you’re doing it,” he said, “but I think you’re wrong. I’m still learning the basics. Dr Stryker says there’s no need to push too hard.”

Erik scowled. The phrase, “Dr Stryker says,” was cropping up too frequently. Dr Stryker said a lot of reassuring things. He said that mutants were just like other people, and Charles needn’t worry that he was any less part of society. He said that Charles’s power was something to be very proud of, but that it didn’t need to define him. He said that he knew what Charles was going through. He said that Charles would have all the support that he needed. By that point even a mention of him set Erik’s teeth on edge, a fact which Charles was obviously finding more and more frustrating.

Charles was getting the mulish look that meant he thought Erik was being unreasonable. “Will you stop growling inside your head?” he said, sending Erik a quick impression of his threatening storm cloud of a brain. “Yes, I asked him, and I’m going to listen to him. He’s not that bad.”

“Fine,” said Erik, biting down on a snapped retort. “You like him, I get it. Forget it, okay?”

He tried to keep walking, but Charles didn’t move. “No, I want to talk about it,” he said. “You’re pushing me to mess with people’s minds, and I don’t think I should. Dr Stryker says I don’t need to do it, and he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? He’s met other telepaths, and tested them and he understands how it works. I’m glad that he does. I don’t see why I should hate him just because you do. He’s just doing his job. The government wants to find out about us, that’s all.”

“I don’t care what they want,” said Erik said, feeling his temper fraying further. “Why should I be their lab rat?”

“Oh honestly.” Charles didn’t quite roll his eyes, but he came close. “Try to see it from their point of view. People get scared of what they don’t understand, so the test centres work to understand us. There’s nothing wrong with that. Isn’t it better than having them so terrified of us that they kill us on sight? I know you don’t like it, Erik, but maybe it’s worth it.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Erik snapped.

“Then tell me!” said Charles, caught between frustration and outright anger. “You never tell me anything. You’ve got this huge problem with the tests and you won’t talk about it. If you think I’m so wrong about them you could at least tell me why.”

Erik glared at the floor, wishing he hadn’t said anything. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said.

Charles’s eyes went bright and intense. His cheeks were flushed. “That’s not true.” He grabbed Erik’s arm, gripping a little too tight. “Do you think I don’t know when you’re lying? You think about Stryker all the time, and Seb too. Whenever you’re on your own you’re thinking about them. I try not to spy, but I can’t help seeing. All the time, Erik. Why, for God’s sake?”

“Leave it alone,” said Erik, shaking off his hand. “You know why I hate the tests and you know what Seb was like. You saw it yourself.”

“Yes, I do know,” said Charles. “I know he had a completely weird obsession with you, and would have killed me just to piss you off, and that you’ve never once admitted to anyone that you were sleeping with him.”

Even Charles looked slightly shocked at the words. Erik felt like he’d been slapped in the face. “I told you to leave it alone,” he said furiously, turning back towards his car.

“I’m not going to leave it,” said Charles. He was breathing fast, though Erik could barely hear it over the thumping of his own heart. “You try to push me into using my powers because apparently you know better than the evil test centres, and you won’t stop asking even though you know I don’t want to.”

“You need to learn!”

“No, I don’t,” Charles snapped back, quick as a flash. “You don’t know. You expect me to do what you tell me and think what you tell me, but you won’t tell me why. You just want to control me. _Do you have any idea what that feels like?”_

The words resonated and echoed.

Erik was dizzy, suddenly, and confused. “Charles, stop,” he managed. The world shivered. The gravel drive was gone. Charles was gone.

He was in his own familiar room, but it wasn’t comforting. He’d showered until he’d scrubbed his skin bright red, brushed his teeth over and over. He was wrapped in his quilt but he couldn’t get warm. He sat on his bed, scrunching himself up in the corner with his arms around his head, shivering, feeling like he was going to throw up. It always ended like this, with him curled up here, hugging a pillow like a little kid, swearing that it would be the last time. Even as he promised himself, he knew it wasn’t true. The next day would be just the same. He’d nod and agree with whatever Seb said or did. It only took the snap of Seb’s fingers and Erik was there to give him whatever he asked for. Anything at all.

He didn’t kid himself that it was a relationship, him and Seb. Relationships were about caring for someone, protecting them. It was a joke to think that he could ever protect Seb. It was a joke to imagine that Seb would ever want to protect him.

He did what Seb told him, even when he ought to know better. He did know better, and he was still letting it happen. It was his own fault. All he had to do was say no.

He never said no.

It wasn’t Seb’s fault. Seb was right about mutants, right about humans. Erik didn’t know how Seb being right had led to this, but it had.

Tomorrow morning, he would go to school, to Havok and Azazel and the football team and the world he ruled. And after school, Seb would pull up at the kerb in his sporty car, and Erik would get in.

_Erik!_

He felt Charles’s mind falter, drawing back in horror or disgust. The bedroom fractured around him and he was back on the gravel of Charles’s driveway, but the greater part of him was still sixteen years old and cold with shame. He stumbled, knees shaking. “Fuck you,” he gasped, “stay the hell out of my head.”

“Erik…”

“ _Fuck you_ , Charles.”

He turned and ran down the path, fumbling for the control he would need to open the car door, wishing fervently that, just this once, he’d brought the goddamn keys.

 

***

 

He wasn’t sure if Charles used telepathy to find him. It was probably pretty obvious where he’d go. By the time Charles pedalled up he’d been sitting on the slope tossing rocks down at a rusting car frame for an hour.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

Charles sat down cautiously on the stones, a foot or so away. “You didn’t answer your phone. You must have at least a million missed calls from me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Erik stared down at the tumbled rocks. He loved the quarry. He’d played there for years. He wasn’t going to look at the substation and think of Charles crouched against the rock wall to escape the sparks, and he wasn’t going to look at the little sun-trap of boulders and think of the very first time Seb kissed him. The quarry was a place where he could feel free. It was his, not Seb’s.

He threw another rock. It bounced and clattered angrily off the car. Charles shifted awkwardly on the rough ground. Out of the corner of his eye, Erik could see him fiddling nervously with pebbles and grass stems, before tossing one of the pebbles away, sending it skittering down the slope after the rock. Eventually, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, he said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Erik ducked his head down so was pressed against his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could close his mind just as tightly.

“I don’t…” Charles began, choked and uncertain. “I… oh, Erik, I shouldn’t have lost my temper. It was all nonsense, about you making me do things, it was just a way to win an argument, I can’t believe I said it.”

Suddenly, stupidly, Erik wanted his mom. He wanted to be four years old again and sitting in her lap, back when troubles were a scraped knee or a lost toy or a mean older kid. Back when hugs and kisses made everything better.

Just like a four-year-old, he felt tears prickle at his eyes.

There were more unidentified scrabblings of rocks and twigs in fidgeting hands. When Charles next spoke his voice was fierce. “I should be saying sorry for what I did. I suppose I am sorry, but I right now I can only… I can’t think about that. I just want to hurt him.”

“I said I don’t want to talk. We’re not talking about it.”

It wasn’t Seb’s fault. He should have said no.

There was another pause. Erik opened his eyes a fraction, blinking away moisture. Charles had picked up another pebble, smooth and white and speckled. He turned it over in his hands, rubbing the dirt from it with his thumb.

“Do you want me to go?” he said. “I will, if you want, but I’d rather stay. Just for a little while.”

Erik did want him to go, and that made him angrier than all the rest. He wanted to be left alone, and he didn’t want to be touched, but more than all the rest he didn’t want to be that weak, damaged person. He half-turned toward Charles. “You can stay,” he said. He tried to keep his voice steady, but he choked on the words. The tears welled up. He pressed his face to his knees again, hunching tight in on himself, as though that could be some protection from his own messed up feelings.

“Can I…?” said Charles. There was the sound of rock fragments shifting as he edged closer.

Erik forced himself not to twist away, forced himself to unwrap one arm from around his knees and hold out his hand to Charles. He didn’t want to be touched, until Charles’s hand gripped his tight, and then he didn’t want to ever let go.

“I could hurt him,” said Charles. “I would. If he came back.”

The quarry rustled around them with the light breeze and the tiny movements that might have been living things. The sounds mingled with the sound of Charles’s breath and his own. They sat together and breathed.

As dusk fell the air cooled quickly and soon Charles was shivering slightly in his thin, summery t-shirt. Erik finally managed to uncurl himself, and he tugged on Charles’s hand until Charles was up against his side. Charles leaned in inch by inch, melting against him until they were pressed together as they always used to be. Touching him was so entirely different from touching Seb. They’d never held each other. They’d never hugged.

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone,” said Erik. This time his voice didn’t waver.

“I know,” said Charles. “But I would.”

 

***

 

_We’re getting his powers under control_ , Emma reassured him, a few days later.

Erik found his mind shying away from the thought of what Charles might have told her, but it was a relief to know that she was on the case.

By that time he felt normal again, the disturbed memories back where they belonged, in the past. He was fine.

 

***

 

Soap, sponges, water. Erik could deal with all those things. They were ordinary car wash things, and he’d been pressured into attending a few in his time. When Emma had demanded the favour in exchange for fixing up his brain, he’d known what he was getting into

What was harder to deal with was Charles, already damp from leaning across cars, with his nipples clearly visible through his thin white t-shirt.

“Enjoying the view?” asked Tony, coming to lean against the neighbouring stretch of wall. “He sure is a pretty sight. I think he has a thing for me, you know. Seriously, we reached for the same sponge, our hands brushed in the soapy water, I felt this…”

Erik grabbed him by the shirt and pinned his shiny wristwatch to the wall. “Shut up,” he said, squeezing the watch band a little. “I’m not in the mood.”

Tony grinned, entirely unabashed. “Hey Steve,” he yelled, “come save me from a violent death, big man.”

Steve ambled over. “What have you done now?” he said, with a long-suffering sigh. “Erik, please don’t kill him, for some reason I seem to be fond of him.”

Erik released him unwillingly. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he growled, but by then Tony had switched his attention to locating all the spots of foam on Steve’s body. Steve fended him off, turning bright pink in the process.

“Cars,” he said firmly. “Remember why we’re here?”

Tony nodded. “To get wet and remove clothing,” he said. “Okay, let’s go do that.”

There was another small struggle as they walked away, which ended with both Tony’s wrists firmly grasped in one of Steve’s big hands. “Sorry about that,” said Steve over his shoulder. “And you might want to start washing things too, I think Emma’s headed this way.”

Emma was indeed heading his way, cool and pristine in a microscopic white skirt and top, all long legs and bare midriff and perfect, flicking hair.

“Looking good, Em,” said Erik.

“Likewise, sugar. But take your shirt off and get to work. You’re late.”

“I turned up,” Erik objected, “that’s enough payback. I don’t strip on command.” He’d been intending to pretty soon, because the sun was beating down, but now pride required that he kept it on for a while longer.

Emma laughed her tinkling laugh. “It’s sweet how you can delude yourself about the power dynamic in our friendship. Go get yourself a sponge.”

 

***

 

Business was good and the school parking lot was crowded. Under Emma’s direction, Azazel was popping around distributing buckets. Havok and Peter were looking virtuously obedient and stealthily lobbing sponges at each other when Emma’s back was turned. Peter had pinpoint accuracy. Havok managed to hit practically everyone, including Mary-Jane whose immediate and disproportionate response was a bucket of water down the back of the neck. Additional decoration was provided by a handful of cheerleaders in uniform, mostly meeting and greeting customers or sitting on handy perches and admiring Steve, who was engrossed in washing, blissfully unaware, like the Greek god of cleanliness.

Charles’s latest customer was driving an ancient Ford which looked like it might fall to pieces once the dirt holding it together had been removed. Raven and Henry were treating it with polite and cautious respect, sluicing water gently over the roof while Charles crouched to wipe at the lower panels.

Erik headed in their direction. When he was a few metres away Charles’s head jerked up and he bounced to his feet. “Hi,” he said, running a wet hand through his hair. It was already sticking up in all directions. He looked thoroughly mussed, soaked and a little grimy from kneeling on the ground. Mostly though, he looked gorgeous. “So this is actually rather fun. Did you just get here?”

“I was late,” said Erik. He was later because he’d been staring at that see-through t-shirt for the past ten minutes. “Did Emma bully you into coming early?”

Charles smiled ruefully. “Well, yes,” he said. “I helped her set up. It seems she still has the power to terrify me, no matter how nice she is.”

“You should have said. I’d have come too.”

Charles blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Would you?”

Erik couldn’t help but think that if he had come earlier he would have seen all the stages of Charles’s t-shirt getting damp, and have put a stop to Tony’s perverted hand-brushing antics, and have risked unscrupulous retribution by telling Emma where to get off.

“Well, it’s good to see you now,” said Charles. He pulled a sponge out of his bucket. Foam ran down his arm. “Do you want to…?”

“Yeah,” said Erik, more eagerly than he should have, “I’ll give you a hand with this one.”

 

***

 

“So,” said Charles, looking with satisfaction at car number three, “I’m beginning to understand the American car wash mentality. It’s about community spirit, or something. That’s part of why everyone turns out to watch.”

“Emma thinks it’s because I stand around without a shirt on,” said Erik. He was distracted by a smudge on Charles’s cheek. It was almost as fascinating as the t-shirt. He put his hands behind his back to restrain himself from wiping it away. Then he realised that he was still wearing his shirt. He felt that he’d kept it on for long enough to prove to himself that he wouldn’t bow to Emma’s every whim, so he pulled it over his head. The sun felt good on his back. He rolled his shoulders and bent to pick up his sponge again.

There was a small squeak from behind him.

He turned round. Charles was facing firmly away from him, all attention fixed on the car.

“Charles?” he said.

“Yes, Erik?” said Charles, scrubbing furiously.

“What’s up?”

Charles didn’t turn. “Um,” he said, “why aren’t you wearing your shirt?”

“Because it’s hot.”

“True,” said Charles, slightly strangled, “it is hot, you’re quite right.”

Erik swallowed. A sudden rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the sun settled low in his stomach. He’d taken his shirt off so many times just to oblige, and for the approving noises and caresses he always got in return. He tried not to focus too hard on the flushed skin of Charles’s neck.

Charles turned around. He was blushing, but he offered Erik a smile that was both rueful and amused. Erik smiled back. It felt almost as though they were sharing a joke.

“Well,” said Charles. “I know you’re doing Emma’s bidding by just standing there half-naked, but we should get back to work.”

An hour later there was a lull in custom. The two of them had been separated in the crowd of workers for a while, but as people dispersed towards the school to find spots to rest and eat, Erik found himself wandering in Charles’s direction. Charles gently drifted away from a chattering group to meet him.

“Hey,” said Erik.

“Hello,” said Charles. “Still no shirt.”

“No shirt,” Erik agreed. “Is that okay?”

Charles grinned. “I think I can cope.” He nodded towards the ice cream truck, which had pulled up to take advantage of the gathering of overheated customers. “Do you want one? My treat.”

“Yeah,” said Erik. Ice cream sounded good, but more than that, the idea of being bought one made something flutter inside him.

“What would you like?” Charles asked. “No, wait, don’t tell me.” He raised a hand to his temple. “A vanilla cone,” he said. “Well that’s not terribly interesting. Okay, go and sit down, I’ll be right back.” He waved towards the building, where the sun had baked the wall to warmth.

Erik sat. There were rough, scratchy bricks at his back and paving slabs under his fingertips. No metal. It was lonely. He let his awareness stretch out, making it as sensitive as he could. Wiring deep within the walls, the echoing sheets and blocks of the cars in the parking lot, small pieces, buttons and jewellery on the people around him.

Charles came back with a cone in either hand. He passed one to Erik and lowered himself down onto the paving slabs, licking away happily and watching the people. Perhaps he was feeling for their minds the way Erik was feeling for the metal.

The silence was companionable. Erik ate his ice cream without noticing, mind lost in the dancing specks. Then he drew his awareness inwards to the ever-present chunk of metal in his own pocket and the coins in Charles’s. There was something else there too. It was hollow and oddly shaped. Erik traced it absently with his mind, then suddenly focused more sharply. Recognition blossomed.

He knew that scrap of iron. He’d shaped it.

“Erik? What is it?” asked Charles, peering at him.

“You’ve got my chess piece.”

“Oh,” said Charles. There was a long pause while he twisted his fingers together. “I usually keep it by my bed. Today… I don’t know. I just wanted it.”

Erik felt the quiet companionship come crashing down around his shoulders. The chess piece he’d made, the knight in shining armour, and everything it stood for.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Charles looked up, surprised. “Sorry for what?”

Erik clenched his fists. He’d known all the time that he’d abandoned Charles, and he’d thought he knew why. “I thought you’d changed,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you, but you’ve been here all the time and I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry.”

“Erik.”

“Please, Charles, I’ll make it up to you. Can we… if we could… I just want it to be like before. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to…”

Charles caught at his hand. “Erik! For goodness sake, will you be quiet for a moment?”

Erik shut up. He was fairly sure that it would best to do exactly what he was told.

Charles eyed him curiously for a moment, then he smiled. It was fond and gentle and utterly characteristic of him. “I wish you’d stop apologising,” he said. “You don’t need to, that’s not what it’s about at all. I mean, I don’t blame you. I’m not angry.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Charles. “When we first… right after it happened, Raven kept telling me I should be, and I did try, but it didn’t work.” He pressed their shoulders together gently. “How could I be angry? I mean, I’m not saying you didn’t upset me, but listen, Erik… even back then, I knew what you’d had to do had been awful for you, and now… I know you don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to - to psychoanalyse you or something, I don’t know how to do that. But I feel like, if what happened to you had happened to me, I might have made a couple of questionable relationship decisions too. And it’s okay. We’re friends again now, and even when we weren’t, I had Raven and Emma to look after me.”

Erik glared at the ground. “They shouldn’t have had to. It should have been me.”

Charles’s thumb rubbed over Erik’s knuckles. “Yes, it should. But don’t you understand? That time at Emma’s when you were so unhappy… it should have been me.” He sighed. “But it wasn’t. Well, I can’t expect everything to be the way it was before. After all, I have changed.”

Erik wondered, not for the first time, how anybody could think the way Charles did. “You haven’t changed,” he said, almost laughing, “you’re still unbelievable. What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re acting like it’s not even my fault.”

“This may come as a surprise to you,” said Charles, “but not absolutely everything in the world is your fault.”

“I don’t think everything’s my fault,” said Erik, even though pretty much all of it had happened because he’d let it. He should have done something about Seb a long time ago, he should have been there for Charles. He should have got it right. “Why do you always forgive me?”

Charles gave his little lopsided smile. “I can’t help it. It just happens. Look, I… I don’t blame you, and it doesn’t change how I feel, but… if I could just be sure.”

Erik shook his head. He couldn’t say anything, but his thoughts were tumbling over each other, _sure, I’m sure, please, always you_.

Charles’s expression softened into something almost painfully happy. He traced a finger down Erik’s cheek. “I don’t think I’m quite as lovely as all that,” he said, “but I think that maybe you can kiss me now.”

Erik leaned in. Charles kissed him in small, tentative nibbles, like that very first time when it had all been new. He tasted of mint chocolate chip ice cream, tingling sweetness with every gentle press of the lips. Just like that first time, Erik hauled him in and kissed him properly. He laughed against Charles’s mouth. Back then it had been so strange, kissing a human. This time it didn’t matter at all. Mutant or human, they were the same.

 

***

  
After that, they were very firmly back together.

Erik’s parents had always made it clear that he wasn’t allowed to have boyfriends stay over, but since the day Charles came home with Erik after the car wash they’d also made it clear that they would ignore all evidence that it was happening, up to and including Charles’s occasional appearances at the breakfast table.

Occasional was all it could be. Charles was admittedly small, but Erik was six feet of muscular teenage athlete a twin bed – cramped enough even without adding an extra person. Although Erik couldn’t cope with more than a couple of nights at a time sleeping crunched against the wall with a mouthful of hair, waking up thoroughly cramped and far too hot, even those mornings were wonderful in their own way. They started with Charles rolling over, half-awake but already playful, his hand sliding slyly down Erik’s stomach.

At school things were back to one of Erik’s various versions of normal. He spent his time lying on the grass with Charles, meeting up between classes, exchanging kisses when they passed in the hallways. The only difference was that Charles could reach out and touch him from across the school, like a tap on the shoulder, a whisper of _Erik, are you there, are you busy, do you mind?_

Sometimes he was busy. Mostly he wasn’t.

_Hello_ , Charles said in his head, one afternoon when it was too hot to work. _I’m in French and I’m bored. I’m passing you a note._

_Okay_ , Erik agreed. They’d tried it before, not very successfully, as a game to train his powers the way Emma constantly trained Charles’s. He stretched out his awareness. The language classroom was just down the corridor, easy to pinpoint using door handles and electric wires. He felt his way through the table and chair legs and the myriad scraps of metal in the room until he found Charles’s chess piece. He made it vibrate slightly.

_Stop it!_ said Charles. Erik could feel the way he was biting his lip to smother a laugh. _Look on the floor._

Erik located the bright curl of a paperclip by the leg of Charles’s chair. He started to drag it. _You know, you could just talk to me. Do you know how difficult this is?_

_Do you know how difficult it is to pick out your mind in all this racket? I think half my class are hearing a mumbled version of what I’m saying to you. And possibly the teacher. Oops. Over and out._

Erik grinned to himself and kept dragging until the paperclip slid under the classroom door, attached to a piece of folded notepaper. He wriggled it stealthily around the room and over to his desk. Unfolded, the little scrap of paper revealed another of Charles’s dreadful cartoons, showing the two of them in tuxes, standing in front of a limousine and surrounded by a veritable fountain of hearts. Underneath, in multicoloured capital letters, were the words: I THINK YOU’RE CUTE. WILL YOU GO TO THE PROM WITH ME?

He laughed out loud.

The teacher frowned at him. “Something you want to share with the class, Mr Lehnsherr?”

“No.” Only that he was utterly smitten with his boyfriend. But they all knew that anyway.

Once the teacher had turned back to the blackboard he reached for the paperclip again, fused it into the word YES and tossed it towards the door, sending it scuttling back to its owner.

He would go to the prom. It was part of his ordinary life, the one with Charles in it, and school and home. But hovering on the edge of his awareness, there was another life, with a little background voice that said, _You know what’s happening, Erik. Why aren’t you doing something about it?_

  
***

 

What with the roasting hot weather and the end of their senior year approaching, school was a buzz of excitement for the summer. Everyone was talking about vacation plans, college acceptances and the weird idea that they would soon be scattered around the country. Sitting on the playing field in the midst of a lounging, chattering group, Erik looked round at the familiar faces and tried to imagine where they would be six months. Peter and Mary-Jane in New York, Havok in Colorado, Azazel in California, at Stanford.

Emma would be in California too, three thousand miles away.

For him and Charles the next year looked rosy. His place at MIT was the best he could have hoped for and much more than his mother had been expecting, judging by the look on her face when he’d told her. At the same time Charles would start his post-grad work at Harvard, taking extra classes to get his experimental technique up to the same standard as his theoretical knowledge. With his family’s money to spend, Charles would probably get a little apartment in Cambridge. They would be able to spend lazy mornings stretched out in a real double bed rather than trying to squeeze themselves into Erik’s dorm room. It ought to be perfect.

Tony was also headed to MIT, while Steve would be studying fine art in Maryland. Steve was talking to Charles about it, treating the approaching separation with entirely misguided optimism. “It’s only a short flight,” explained. “I could even drive it sometimes. I’ll be able to see him all the time.”

Erik glanced over at Tony, who was paying Jan shamelessly extravagant compliments while Henry Pym fumed in the background. He sent Charles a flash of mental amusement.

Charles ignored him firmly. “That will be lovely,” he said. “We’ll be glad to see you too.”

“Yeah,” Erik agreed after an insistent mental prompting, “great.” _So are you going to give him reports on what Tony’s been doing, or are you going to lie to him every time you see him for three years?_

_Maybe he won’t ask,_ Charles said hopefully. _Then we can just not tell._

Erik smiled but suddenly the thought of them three years ahead jarred at him uncomfortably. Their future, all planned out and waiting for them. Things might not be that way. If he wanted he could make the choice himself. It was simple enough. He could go to MIT and study engineering. He could drink illegally at frat parties, go on road trips, make friends and spend every spare minute with Charles. He could register at a test centre in Cambridge with new doctors and a new Mike-the-nurse, and the same old Stryker visiting especially for him. He could be a good boy, give his blood and live his life.

Or he could go somewhere else. He could stop whining and crying to himself like a frightened child and start doing something about it.

There were ways to find the answers he wanted. He could break into places, bribe people or threaten people. In fact, a lot of it would come down to how far he could bring himself to go. Something told him it was a lot further than he’d like to admit.

He wouldn’t have to wonder if the latest dangerous teenage mutant would disappear the way Seb had, or commit suicide that might not have been suicide. He wouldn’t have to wonder, because he would go and get them out.

Even killers deserved better than that.

It was tantalising, the thought of quieting that little voice in his mind that was sick of his own weakness. He could find a way to live without people watching him, no more tests or pretending. Money wouldn’t be a problem – he could walk into any locked and alarmed building, open any safe. Security cameras wouldn’t worry him either. Practically any machine or piece of electronics contained enough metal for him to manipulate or destroy it. Weapons were the same. He’d never tried stopping a bullet but it would probably be easy enough.

Sometimes it seemed like a fantasy, but more and more often, when the slick mutant rights campaigners talked about nothing on TV or when something brought Seb unexpectedly to mind and he found himself alone with his thoughts – at times like those he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Only the day before he’d found himself staring out of his window and wondering if he could kill a person who was trying to hurt him, and how he could deal with someone who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He sometimes sat and played with circuit boards, wondering how to scope out a security system from outside a building. He tried to work out ways to practice. Ridiculously, he considered trying bank robbery as a way of working up to government facilities. And he worried what he would do if Stryker threatened to hurt his parents or Charles. He wondered if there was anyone Stryker cared about.

“Erik?”

Charles shifted his position and stretched himself out on the grass, settling his head in Erik’s lap and capturing one of his hands to pet and kiss. “I’m not going to ask what you’re thinking,” he said, smiling his blinding smile, “but wouldn’t you rather think about me instead?!

Erik grinned down at him, his thoughts scattering. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess I would.”   


***

  
It was Sunday. Sunday meant Erik drove Charles to the test centre and then hung around in a nearby café until it was time to pick him up again. This was completely unnecessary (according to Charles), and disturbingly overprotective (according to Emma), but Erik honestly didn’t give a shit. He wanted to be nearby, just in case… just in case.

He was leaning against the car and wishing that he’d stayed in the café longer or that the day wasn’t quite so hot when Charles pushed the door open. Erik stepped forwards thankfully, then paused as another figure appeared in the doorway. Stryker placed a hand on Charles’s back, guiding him out, and made some kind of laughing comment.

Erik was halfway across the car park before he was even aware of moving.

“Ah, Mr Lehnsherr,” Stryker greeted him affably, “how apposite. I’ve been hoping to have a word with you.”

“What do you want?” snapped Erik. He automatically slung an arm around Charles’s shoulder, an overtly possessive gesture that had been the cause of a couple of laughing squabbles in the past. Charles should have thrown him a flash of amusement about it. He didn’t. There was almost no mental connection all, just a whisper at the edge of Erik’s awareness. Charles pressed against him, shrinking into his side, barely breathing.

Erik started to frame a questioning thought, but a tiny, frightened tendril of Charles’s mind muffled it before it was half formed.

Stryker oiled forwards, bestowing an approving smile on Charles before turning back to Erik. “I have a piece of information for you. A reassurance, perhaps,” he said, tilting his head. “As I recall, you have some interest in Sebastian Shaw. You were curious as to what had become of him. I believe I can now inform you with some certainty that he won’t cause problems for you again.”

“What do you mean by that?” Erik asked. His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was rough and cold.

“Now, what’s the phrase?” said Stryker. His smile stretched away from his teeth. “Ah, yes. Accidents happen.”

With his self-control on the edge of snapping, Erik stepped forward, pushing Charles behind him. Stryker’s smirk didn’t falter. He stood there, perfectly calm and sure of himself.

Erik paused. There was something not right… for a moment he was confused, uncertain what he was doing or why. He frowned, trying to focus. Nothing was as clear as it should have.

_Erik_ , Charles whispered. His mind reached out, not invading Erik’s but surrounding and containing it. The anger came flooding back with a vengeance. Stryker looked suddenly alert, glancing over his shoulder at the test centre. He took a quick step back. There was fear in his eyes as they flicked from Erik to Charles. It was one of the most beautiful sights Erik had ever seen.

“Tell me what you mean,” said Erik. He wrapped his ability around the favourite chunk of metal he kept in his bag and brought it spinning into his hand. He could have killed Stryker so easily and he probably wouldn’t even have felt guilty, but he didn’t want that. He wanted answers.

Stryker looked poised for flight. The metal ball spun.

Then Charles was vividly present, whimpering in panic. _No, Erik, please, just take me home. I want to go home._

He sounded wrecked. It was Stryker’s doing, whatever it was, and that only increased Erik’s desire to nail the bastard’s feet to the floor, but concern won out. He reached behind him. Charles grabbed the hand and latched on for dear life, tugging towards the car. Erik let himself be tugged. There was no way in hell he was taking his eyes off the man in front of him.

“I’ll see you next Thursday, Mr Lehnsherr,” said Stryker, quite steadily but with less than his usual aplomb.

“Yeah,” Erik told him, “you will.”

 

***

 

They lay together on Erik’s bed. Erik had tried asking and he’d tried coaxing. Neither had got him any real response, so he was waiting, thinking gentle thoughts about the skin of Charles’s neck, covered with tiny, invisible hairs that slowly merged with soft curls, and how it felt against his lips. He thought about Charles’s warm, solid body in his arms and the slight scratchiness of the freshly laundered pillowcase. He thought of his mom and dad cooking dinner and how much they would like Charles to stay, and of school on Monday, and a hundred other homely, comforting things.

Eventually Charles rolled over and pushed his face into the crook of Erik’s neck. “I can’t go back there next week,” he said.

Erik tucked an arm around his back so they were cocooned inside their own bodies, cheek to cheek. There was no answer he could make to that. He didn’t want to say, “You have to.”

“Tell me,” he said instead, for perhaps the twentieth time. “Start at the beginning. Take it slowly.”

Charles shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “It sounds so silly,” he said. “It seemed like nothing at first, nearly nothing, but it wasn’t, it was all wrong.”

“Slowly,” Erik told him, filling his mind up with comfort again.

Charles gave a weak laugh. “Thank you.” He brushed up against Erik’s mind but his thoughts were too disordered and he had to resort to words. “Everything… it all started out normal. We were doing my test. Dr Stryker was sitting with me like he always does. It was just… this man came in to bring him a cup of coffee, and he tripped, and… and…”

Bit by bit, Erik coaxed the story out of him. Charles was right, it had started as almost nothing. As with every other test, Stryker’s mind had seemed pleased and proud of Charles, mistily, with no thoughts clear enough to read, but always friendly. Always welcoming.

And then the man spilled the hot coffee over Stryker’s legs, and Stryker had jumped to his feet, swearing.

“It must have hurt him,” Charles whispered. “He was furious, too, from his face.”

“Anyone would be angry,” said Erik, confused but trying to soothe.

“I know that!” Charles wailed. He caught his breath, purposefully calming it before he spoke again. “The thing is, he didn’t feel like an angry person should feel. He felt as though he was still thinking happy, friendly things, but he wasn’t, he couldn’t have been. There should have been pain.” Another deep, shaky breath. “The things I was feeling from him, they weren’t his thoughts. He’s never been friendly or proud of me. It was never…” He stumbled over his efforts to explain and pressed his face tight against Erik’s shoulder.

“It was never real,” Erik finished. He felt a flash of guilt, as though it was somehow his fault, punishment for his anger at Charles’s ignorance.

Charles made a jerky movement of assent. “I’ve been so stupid,” he said. His voice started to shake along with his breathing. “He’s not who I thought he was at all.” He huddled smaller, shivering. The weirdly nightmarish image he was projecting was a white porcelain egg, carefully painted with a smiling human mouth. It was cracking, very slowly, as something forced its way out from the inside.

Erik tried to push it aside from both their minds. “Shh, baby, it’s okay,” he said, unthinkingly resorting to the despised pet name as the only form of comfort he could offer.

“I can’t go back.” Charles clutched at him urgently, at once panicky and determined. “Erik, I _can’t_. He’ll be hiding behind his horrible fake thoughts. I can’t bear to see him smile at me when I know everything’s a trick. But it’s… oh god, it’s worse than that. There was someone else there, _watching_ me.”

“Watching you?” Erik asked. They were so close that every word he said shifted the bones and muscles of his jaw across Charles’s skin.

Charles gave a snuffle of slightly hysterical laughter. “I could feel it as soon as I thought to look. They were right there, hidden away somewhere, feeding the lies into my mind and watching what I did. Someone like me.”

“A mutant?” said Erik.

“A telepath.”

The worst thing was that deep down he’d been expecting it. Once, not long ago, he wouldn’t have believed it, but things had changed. From the moment Stryker had said _we want the same things_ , some part of him had understood. What was the price of peace? These were people were building a world where the terrified humans could feel powerful, and the terrifying mutants could seem harmless enough that they needn’t be harmed in turn. Wasn’t that what they all wanted? It had been one of their own, covering for Stryker and watching Charles. Maybe watching all of them. And there would be others. How many telepaths and healers, shape shifters and fire throwers had heard the spiel about valuable work?

“So in the parking lot…” He remembered Stryker’s face, smugness turning to fear, and Charles’s strange presence. “Fuck, what did you do back there?”

“Shielded you.” Charles pulled away and sat up, taking yet another deep breath and giving Erik the tiniest of smiles. “That telepath’s sneaky, but I’m stronger. They don’t get to touch you.” While Erik was still glaring at him in astonished bafflement, his face slipped back into a more serious expression, no longer panicky, just sad. “You’re not surprised by any of this, are you? It’s so strange, I tell you this awful thing, and you already knew. But what’s it all for? What is it that they need to hide?”

Dead children, Erik thought. Easy answers. Manipulation. Worthwhile ends, and unthinkable, unforgivable means.

Contingency plans.

Charles caught some of it. _Where’s Seb?_ his mind echoed back. Then, aloud, his eyes wide and wondering, “What happens when we get too strong?”

 

***

 

Despite it all, life went on. Of course it did. By then, Erik was used to it. However awful things were there was still school on Monday, lunch and teachers and handing in homework, Emma giving sharp orders to her prom-organising minions and Azazel talking about sex – though never, any longer, about Emma. Charles sat through it calmly, staring into space in his classes, leaning quietly against Erik during lunch, and only engaging in conversations that he could keep going with the minimum input, no more than nods and encouraging expressions. Erik caught Raven giving them a couple of puzzled looks. Nobody else seemed to notice.

There was no more Monday practice so, after the bell went, Erik wandered over to lean against the wall by Charles’s English classroom. With the prom looming that weekend he’d finally realised that he had almost no time left to rent a tux, which meant a trip to the mall.

“You want a ride home first?” he asked when Charles emerged.

“No, I’ll come with you.” Charles didn’t look up from the medical journal he was flicking through disinterestedly as he walked. “I don’t want to go home.”

The mall was full, people swarming through it with the sort of bustling intentness that gave Charles a headache. Erik made him hang out in the relative quiet of the bookshop café while he got fitted. Charles had his own tuxedo, from the few times his mother had deemed him worthy of dragging to society events. It was the only time that the difference in their financial circumstances had ever even intruded on Erik’s consciousness, but it bothered him knowing that he would be going to the prom in something rented while Charles would be tailored perfection. Even if the world was ending, he still wanted to look as good as he possibly could for prom. Charles deserved that.

By the time he’d been measured and looked at everything twice the people in the store had started giving him amused glances and he was wishing regretfully that he’d brought Emma with him. He could have lived with her sugary amusement and mockery if it meant he didn’t have to pick a fucking vest colour. Finally the storeowner took pity on him and firmly dressed him in dark grey everything with a white shirt. Erik looked at himself in the mirror and had to admit that it kind of worked.

“An excellent choice, sir,” the man said sardonically as he rang up the price on the register. Erik fixed him with a glare as he handed over his card and was instantly rewarded with a startled expression and a gush of cowed politeness. It was unnerving. He glanced into the mirror again on the way out to check that he hadn’t suddenly grown vampire fangs, but no, he looked just like usual.

Charles was holed up with a pile of books, a slice of cake and his journal, looking like he’d settled in for the afternoon. Erik got him out of the store by the simple method of picking up the remainder of the cake, shoving it in his mouth and walking away, requiring Charles to scuttle after him in order to express his displeasure.

“Erik! I was eating that!”

“Too slowly,” said Erik, swallowing his mouthful. “Come on. My mom wants me to pick up some groceries.”

Charles pouted, but as they reached the car he bumped his shoulder against Erik’s with a wrinkle-nosed smile. “I can’t believe you stole my cake.”

The smile was worth a lot. Charles hadn’t smiled much that day, or said much. But at the grocery store, apparently, it was time to talk.

 

***

 

 “You should have told me before, about what he’s been saying to you, what you suspected,” Charles said, placing two large jars of peanut butter into the cart. “I wish you had, all the times you been angry with me under the surface, if I’d just _known_ …” he gave a rough shrug, “…but, honestly, in some ways I’m grateful that you didn’t.” A jar of chocolate spread followed the peanut butter. “Right, what’s next?”

“Toilet paper,” said Erik, inspecting his list.

If he had ever intended to have this conversation at all, he wouldn’t have imagined having it in a grocery store. The most skin-crawling parts of the Stryker story had been interspersed with checking for bruises on apples, and he’d talked about Seb’s mother while concentrating firmly on remembering which brand of laundry detergent his parents usually bought. He’d stuttered to a halt at one point, remembering that door slamming shut in his face, but Charles hadn’t said anything about it, just looked at the fabric softeners and mumbled something about lavender.

“It’s all a bit much,” Charles continued, attempting to steer the waggly-wheeled shopping cart down the toilet paper aisle. “You know, I thought that the most life-altering thing that would happen to me this year would be moving to the States. And then I fall hopelessly in love, turn into a telepath, discover that the government is doing terrifying things I don’t really understand, and… well, I think I can cope with them one at a time, that’s all.”

Erik scanned the shelves. The toilet paper with embossed cartoon elephants was on sale, the kind he used to love an embarrassing amount when he was little. If he chose it his mother would take pleasure in telling Charles about when he was five and wouldn’t use the bathroom at school without his own special roll. On the other hand, if he didn’t she’d yell at him for not saving the money where he could. Neither were good outcomes.

“Elephants?” asked Charles, poking at the pack.

“Elephants.”

They moved on to the cheese counter with the cart jerking and swerving as it objected to their chosen path. Erik scowled at it. Shopping carts were cursed. The only way to make them go in a straight line was to float them up in the air, which drew crowds of small children and was just plain irritating.

“We should get the cheddar,” said Charles, “if I get a say. Your mother won’t mind, will she?” He indicated the required size and accepted the wrapped piece from the woman behind the counter with a polite, “Thank you,” and a smile that would probably have earned him infinite taster pieces if he had been in the mood. As they moved on he tucked himself against Erik so they each had one arm around each other and one on the shopping cart. It must have looked disgustingly cute or disgustingly offensive, depending on the observer’s outlook. In his life Erik had got more hassle for being gay than for the thing that the Government might actually kill him for one day, not that many people hassled him at all. He’d had it easy, really.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as they emerged into the stifling heat and steered the cart across to where he had parked.

“No.” Charles propped himself against the car while Erik packed the groceries into the trunk. “Neither are you. This is… it’s _forever_ , it’s not going to stop, and it’s horrible, and… no, I’m really not okay.” He gave a sigh. “Can I have a hug now, please?”

It was a little too pathetic. Erik gave him a brief hug and stroked a finger down his cheek while the car doors popped open behind them. “Half of this is an act, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Charles admitted, managing a wobbly smile. “You really do know me to well these days, don’t you? I’m still not quite sure how to react for real.” He scrambled into the passenger seat and fussed with his seatbelt, looking down. “So is that it, or is there anything else I should know?”

“Yeah,” said Erik grimly. “You should know that I’m going to make it stop.”

Charles paused in his fumblings. “How?” he asked.

Erik couldn’t find the words to explain.

The wary look spreading across Charles’s face quickly turned to impatience. After a moment his mind skimmed lightly through Erik’s surface thoughts like fingers trailing through water. What he found there widened his eyes. He sat frozen for a moment and then looked away, slumping sideways and resting his head against the window glass. “Oh god, Erik. I honestly didn’t think this could get any worse.”

 

***

 

Sprawled on his back on the bleachers, Charles stared frustratedly at the sky. “But why’s he doing it?” he asked. “What’s the point of it all? What’s the end result?”

It had been another quiet car ride. They’d dropped off the groceries and Charles had let himself be hugged by Erik’s mom, chatting away to her just as he had at dinner the night before, without the slightest flicker in his smile or hint of tension in the air. Then he’d cheerfully told her that they had a couple more things to do and dragged Erik relentlessly back to school.

Sitting further along the bleacher, Erik turned away from his inspection of the same few clouds that were holding Charles’s attention. He shrugged and grimaced. “I don’t know. To keep tabs on us, so that if we don’t behave they know what to do about it.”

Charles rolled over onto his stomach. He was wearing something like the expression he wore when he was lecturing Peter on genetics, but more thoughtful. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean you and Stryker. Why’s he… well, it just seems like he’s been doing everything he can to make you suspicious.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve got a damn good reason to be suspicious.”

“Yes,” said Charles slowly, “that’s the thing that’s worrying me. _Why_ do you have a reason?”

The question was strange enough that Erik couldn’t quite get his head around it. “What do you mean?” He’d just told Charles all the reasons, the horrible things that were happening, Seb, Stryker, everything. That part, at least, seemed straightforward.

“Well… I mean, don’t you think it’s all a little too much? Too obvious?” Charles sat up and rearranged himself into a pensive little huddle with his chin resting on his knees. One hand picked at a loose splinter of wood. His eyes slid towards Erik and away, back down to the bleacher. “Think about what Stryker said to you in the car park, about Seb, I mean. The way he phrased it, it was as bad as telling you straight out that they’d… I mean, if it is some gigantic cover-up he wouldn’t just go around spouting it off to teenagers, would he? And he must have known you’d be angry. Why would he say that to you? Unless he was trying to provoke a response.”

Erik’s mouth went dry. “You think he’s screwing with me.”

Charles nodded tensely. “There’s no way they don’t have a legitimate cover story for Seb, they’d have to be unbelievably stupid. If Stryker wanted all this to stay hidden he could have told you something reasonable, something that at least made you wonder if you were wrong. Why didn’t he?”

“Fuck.” It was a shuddering, ice-cube-down the-neck realisation. Stryker’s hideous smile seemed to hang in the air, mocking and jeering. The hints and insinuations all came flooding back into Erik’s mind in crisp high definition. Recruitment and contingency plans, ways to deal with threats. He wanted to kick himself, or for preference kick Stryker in the head until blood came out of his ears. The evil, manipulative bastard.

It just wasn’t _fair_.

“What does he want with me?”

“I don’t know.”

Erik stared at him for a long moment. “You’re lying,” he said eventually. “You can guess, I know you can. Will you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Charles made a helpless face. There was a dismal haze of reluctance spreading out from him. “I really don’t know. But… yes, alright, I could make a few guesses.” Expressionless, he ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “It could be a way of judging exactly how far you can be pushed. It could be that he wants to make you angry enough to do something stupid, so they have a valid excuse to get you out of the way. It could be they want to show that the authorities can deal effectively with another teen mutant who goes off the rails – no panic and no delay this time, and everybody sleeps better in their beds at night. It could be that they think that if you run off to be some sort of terrorist-” he caught Erik’s glare and amended “-or resistance fighter, I don’t care what you call it, if you did that you might join up with others and they can unearth more extremists that way. Or I might be completely wrong. If they plan as far ahead as you think they do then there could be any number of reasons.”

_There couldn’t. It’s not true,_ Erik thought, but it was a knee-jerk reaction that Charles didn’t even bother to contradict. He couldn’t fault Charles’s logic.

“Why me?” He sounded pathetic, like a little kid in the playground whining _what did I do to get picked on?_

“Why you?” Charles echoed. “I’d have thought that was obvious. It might be the only thing I’m not confused about.”

Erik scowled. It sure as hell didn’t seem obvious. His mind was functioning slower than it should have, caught up with surprise. Not that it had been very fast to begin with. How could he not have realised? Stryker had always lied, tricked and covered things up. It was all games and stratagems.

Charles gave him that apologetic look again. “Perhaps you don’t see it from the inside,” he said. “May I?”

“Yeah, go on.”

As Charles’s mind sank deeper into his, Erik caught the image of a man. It was a strange picture, unsettling, almost ominous, made up of hard edges and sharp, guarded thoughts, radiating passion, anger and steely determination. Not Stryker. Someone else from the test centre, perhaps? Someone who’d frightened Charles?

“Who is it?” he said.

Charles didn’t answer, just let his fingers creep up to his temple. Other images followed in a rush. A fuzzy imagining of Erik and Seb, preaching hatred. Erik and Emma standing together at the head of a defiant crowd of mutants. Erik in the quarry, snapping his metal trap mercilessly closed and turning away. Erik in the parking lot, eyes blazing with protective fury. Even one that must have been snatched from Erik’s own memory, the clipboard in the test centre, its damning numbers proving that he was still getting stronger.

Erik Lehnsherr. Eighteen years old and incredibly dangerous.

Someone who had to be dealt with, before he got much older.

Erik jerked his mind away. He scrabbled for balance, almost toppling from his perch. “What the hell, Charles?” he gasped. “That’s not me. That’s nothing in the least bit like me.”

Charles bit on his lower lip. “It’s what I see,” he said. “Sometimes. It’s not all you are, but it’s part of you.” He reached out again. The image in Erik’s mind changed. He saw himself in the sunshine in front of a half-washed car, dripping with foam and laughing. Charles smiled wistfully into the memory. He met Erik’s eyes. “You’re mine too,” he said.

Erik shook his head, trying to dislodge the images. “I’m only ever yours.” Everything was for Charles. Even if he left tomorrow it would be for Charles.

Charles scooted closer on the bleachers and pulled Erik’s arm around himself. He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat and radiated a fragile sort of contentment. They seemed so far apart, suddenly.

“Charles, do you…”

It was a question Erik couldn’t put into words, but there was no need. Charles brought the hand he was holding up to his lips and kissed Erik’s knuckles. “I’ll always love you,” he said. He gave himself a little shake as though to throw off any lingering sense of melancholy. “Do you think Emma will have finished by now? I’ll get sunburn if we stay out here much longer.”

Erik looked towards the gym, unaccountably nervous. “We don’t have to tell her.”

“We do,” said Charles. “We’re telling everyone.”

 

 


	6. Seeing the future

“Money,” said Tony. “Bribery and dirty politics is what you really need here.”

“Yes, exactly,” said Charles. “I mean, no, I’m not endorsing bribery or anything. But this is political. It’s about civil rights.”

Tony wasn’t the only human in Emma’s living room. The first time, it had just been Emma, listening with hard eyes to Charles and Erik’s piecemeal explanation. Then the other mutants, called in for a council of war. Now the humans, all the usual suspects. They were wearing the same pinched, intent expressions as the mutants, but none of them really got it.

“It’s not about politics,” said Erik. “Politics is public. It’s about national security, _global_ security. They don’t have to play by the rules.”

“That doesn’t mean we should break them too,” said Charles. “There are so many other options, there are mutant rights groups, protests, the police, ways to campaign and expose things, you don’t just go out and… I’m scared too, but violence only makes things worse.”

Erik had watched every piece of mutant politics he could get his hands on and nobody was talking about what was really going on. It was all sanitised bullshit. Fuck the mutant rights groups, fuck the police. But he didn’t say it, not there in front of everyone. He and Charles had had the same argument too many times, and it always ended with Charles living in some fluffy fantasy world and him on the verge of losing his temper.

“People do stupid things when they’re scared,” said Charles, his hands gesturing with the words. He was gorgeous, as compelling as the most charismatic politician, impassioned, fierce, and direct. “They start hating each other. There are consequences to what we do. I know there’s a lot wrong with the process of politics, I know it’s not always _the right thing_ , but it can work.”

There was a buzz of excitement in the room, as though they were planning a holiday rather than a serious campaign.  The discussion had covered everything from lynchings to Guantanamo Bay. From the history of discrimination, it moved on to the future. Suddenly everyone was chipping in with their big, nebulous dreams. Tony waved his hands as he talked about the insane amount of money he was going to make with his inventions and his dad’s company, and how he’d be able to provide the funding for their newly-imagined movement so that Pepper could capably organise the whole country into doing what she wanted them to do. Jubilee demanded her own activists to organise, all anger and attitude, glad to have something to fight for, and Peter almost guiltily pointed out that he could use a serious issue to boost his hypothetical media career.

Some of it was almost ridiculous. Azazel joked that they’d need a lawyer on the team, and since he looked evil anyway it might as well be him. Jan and Mary-Jane declared that they could design catwalk fashions as a day job and save the world in their spare time. There was the bizarre thought that Havok might spend his college years raising political awareness, alongside drinking and chasing girls. But it didn’t seem so ridiculous when good-hearted Steve suddenly started talking like a soldier.

That chilled them all a little, but not for long. After a moment Tony’s irrepressible grin snapped on. “And we’ve got the Machiavellian mastermind over here,” he declared. He reached out to pat Charles’s knee, and Erik automatically batted his hand away. Tony’s grin widened. “We’ve kind of got two of them, what with Emma… but yeah, I’m not even gonna go there, because it’s too scary to contemplate.”

“Thank you, sugar,” said Emma, “I’ll remember you said that.”

“And we’ve got Erik, our fearless leader,” said Jan. She was smiling, but she meant it. The others were looking at him like he was someone important. Not just Erik Lehnsherr, the mutant jock who lost his temper too easily, but someone he wasn’t sure he knew how to be.

_Our knight in shining armour,_ said Charles, thoughts brushing lightly against Erik’s mind, half mischievous, half serious. _Look at them all, Erik. Think about what we could do._

_They’re a bunch of teenagers,_ Erik told him.

_Yes, and you’re just one teenager. Besides, they won’t be teenagers for long._

Erik looks around, surprised at how detached he felt. He found himself assessing and calculating. Charles was right, they were on the edge of adulthood. But what did it matter? Just being grown up didn’t give you power.

Emma caught his eye.

_Sugar_ , she said, _Charles talks well, but… if you want me, I’m with you._

Suddenly there was a picture in his mind. Emma standing there, chin raised, defiant. Azazel next to her, and Angel. Havok wasn’t with them but, astonishingly, Raven was.

_We’re with you._

 

***

 

Maybe he should have been relieved, knowing that whatever happened he wouldn’t be alone. Maybe it should have felt worse, knowing that his private plans had taken one Emma-sized step closer to plausibility. But when Erik drove Charles home, when he was being smuggled up to Charles’s room, better or worse no longer mattered. What mattered was pushing Charles down on the bed, stripping off his clothes and kissing the insides of his wrists, nuzzling into all the places he was most ticklish, the backs of his knees, his belly button, even his sweaty armpits. Charles yelped and wriggled until Erik grabbed him and pulled them to lie together.

“Impatient?” he asked.

“Yes. Oh, I hate you, don’t make me wait.”

Erik laughed and pressed tight up against Charles’s ass, one hand resting on his cock to feel the heavy pulse of blood through it. “Lovely weather we’ve been having,” he said, as seriously as he could.

Charles swallowed his answering laugh. “Yes, but I think it might rain later,” he said, with impressive steadiness. “Such a shame. I was planning an al fresco dinner party.”

Erik barely managed not to choke, and had to breathe slowly before he replied. They kept up the conversation until neither of them could take it anymore. As Erik grated out, “Read any good books lately?” Charles gave a little desperate moan, jerking his hips, pressing himself forwards into Erik’s hand, the arousal he’d been bottling up suddenly hitting Erik full in the back of the head and making him see stars.

“Bugger the books, god-oh-Erik, please I can’t, I… can I…”

“Yes. Fuck, Charles, yes, anything you want.”

Charles sent a desperate flash of _mouth-on-cock_. “Please, Erik, please let me, I want to.”

For once, Erik couldn't bring himself to say no.

He lay on his back, one arm over his eyes. He’d always wanted this but he couldn’t watch. Charles’s thoughts were going haywire, like a kid on Christmas morning who’d already eaten too much sugar and was shuddering with the effort of not running straight to the tree and ripping open his presents. Erik concentrated on that, on the fact that Charles was so happy, for some inexplicable reason, about getting to suck his cock.

“Of course I’m happy about it,” said Charles, from where he’d taken up position between Erik’s legs, running his fingers over one inner thigh while, presumably, inspecting what was about to be in his mouth. “I’m going to feel it too. And it might be a disaster but you’re not going to dump me for getting it wrong.” He kissed Erik’s knee, of all things, and there was no way that should have been as arousing as Erik found it. “Also I’ve been analysing your form and I want to try it out.”

Erik heard the smile in his voice and felt the puff of breath that meant Charles was leaning in. There was a long swipe of tongue before Charles wrapped a hand around the base of his cock and slid his mouth down. He really had been watching, or he was naturally talented, or it was just because it was _him_. Erik fisted his hands in the sheet desperately. The sensation was overwhelming.

_It’s good,_ Charles thought, _really, I’m good. Very good. Oh my god, Erik._ He pulled off with an obscene pop and his tongue licked its way around Erik’s shaft. Erik found himself making the kind of noises he would never admit to, little whimpering pleas, until Charles sucked him back in again. He was playful, experimental, testing his own limits. Erik was almost insane with the stop-and-start sucks and teasing licks before Charles began to bob his head in a slow, easy rhythm.

“Fuck. Oh, Jesus, Charles, yes, like that. Just like that.”

Charles moaned delightedly around his cock. _I need to… I need to touch myself, can I touch myself?_

Erik was astonished that he thought he needed to ask. “Yeah,” he gasped, “go on.”

Charles moaned again, brokenly, and slid his hand down. His thoughts were disordered enough that Erik felt the sensation intensely on his own skin. Charles fondled his own balls as he worked his mouth around Erik, and then finally, blissfully, started to pump his cock with frantic jerks, the slow rhythm forgotten.

_Erik, feels so good, oh…_

It mounted astonishingly fast. Charles’s orgasm swept through them both, mindblowing, and Erik came without warning, pulsing furiously into – _fuck_ – into Charles’s mouth, feeling the backlash of shock as salt-heat caught in Charles’s throat and he pulled off, choking.

Erik scrambled backwards up the bed, heaving for breath as he gasped, “I’m sorry, shit, Charles...” He was trembling all over, the whole thing had felt amazing but he’d ruined it. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let that happen. _Sorry, sorry, love you…_

Charles wiped his mouth, coughing, eyes watering, and crawled up to plaster himself half on top of Erik. He was shuddering with the fading aftershocks and with giggles. “Oops,” he said, wiping his mouth on a corner of the duvet before pulling it over them both. “Okay, from now on you get to come first when we do that. Until I learn to swallow.” His laughter faded as he stroked Erik’s chest, tracing his sensitive nipples with one fingertip. “It was lovely,” he said gently. “Minor teething problems, but generally lovely. Shh, it’s okay. Erik, look at me. It’s okay.”

 

***

  
Pushing through the double doors into the test centre waiting room, it felt to Erik as though he should have been striding in wearing a billowing cloak and followed by his team of badass fighters-for-justice. Instead, he slunk in in his usual jeans and t-shirt, signed the log book and slumped down in a seat. Two adult mutants he didn’t know glanced up and then returned, disinterested, to contemplating their cellphones. A kid of about thirteen was sitting stiffly on her on her chair, staring into space. Her tense expression reminded Erik forcefully of the first time he’d come here without his mom or dad, and how horribly long the wait had seemed.

The appointment before him was running late. He looked at his phone for a while, then poked through the dull set of magazines until he found a Disney colouring book and some crayons. As he worked, one of the waiting adults was called in, and Mike-the-nurse came to fetch the girl, coaxing her into smiles within seconds. Mike was good at that. He was a nice guy, Erik thought sourly. Good old Mike.

Eventually a buzzer buzzed and the receptionist glanced up. “Erik Lehnsherr? They’re ready for you.”

The door leading to the testing rooms seemed almost menacing as he approached it but inside it was the same as ever, just a grey-carpeted corridor and a slightly institutional smell.

Stryker was waiting about half-way down.

“Ah, Mr Lehnsherr,” he said. Of course he did. If he were a toy doll, that would be what he said when you pulled the string in his back.

_Fuck you,_ Erik thought. _Fuck you, you fucking asshole piece of shit._

“Do come in. I believe this should be an especially interesting session.”

It shouldn’t have been possible for someone so vile to sound so warmly enthusiastic, but it was what Stryker was best at. That outer shell of normality had charmed Charles very effectively. Even Erik hadn’t minded Stryker once. He couldn’t remember when that had changed. Years ago, perhaps. It must have been back in Seb’s day when Stryker had decided to let little hints of his real self shine through. All this time. All done on purpose.

Erik was really sick of being fucked around with.

“So,” he grated out as they came to the table of neatly laid-out metals and alloys, “where’s your pet telepath today?”

Stryker looked at him for a moment, his eyebrows creeping up towards his hairline. Then he laughed. “Well, that was admirably direct.” His pen scratched briefly on the clipboard, ticking a box, perhaps, or writing a single number. “Hardly a pet, Mr Lehnsherr. A colleague, if you like. And not here, as I’m sure you already know from Charles. Telepaths are scarce and our resources in that area are often stretched. You aren’t the only mutant in the world. Now, let’s begin with your fine control.”

Admirably direct went for both of them, Erik thought, feeling more than a little unsettled. He’d expected some kind of denial, at least an attempt to assure him that the telepath was harmless, or just a visitor, or hadn’t been watching Charles at all. Not a cheerful agreement, as though there was nothing wrong with it. “It’s illegal to misuse telepathy like that,” he said as he started on the pointless control test. “Not that you’d care.”

The test involved guiding a little metal marble through a maze and then one of those buzzer games where you weren’t allowed to touch the ring to the wire. Erik could do the second one with his eyes shut. He watched Stryker instead. “And don’t try to convince me that I’m just another mutant. You want something from me. I know you’re trying to mess with me. Why?”

Stryker’s eyes were on the ring, even though he’d seen Erik do the test perfectly a dozen times before. His voice, when he answered, was musing and offhand. “A rather pointless question, I must say. Whatever I tell you, you have no way of knowing if it’s the truth or just another little nudge in one direction or another.”

The hairs rose on the back of Erik’s neck. It seemed like he could never say anything to rattle Stryker, and Stryker always managed to unnerve him. He was two steps behind every time and there was nothing he could be sure of. “I’ve got Charles,” he said clinging to one point of strength. “He can tell if you’re lying. And he can make you tell the truth for once in your slimy, pathetic life-” A sudden metallic buzz cut him off. He jerked the ring away from the metal, scowling.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Stryker, flicking a switch to reset the puzzle and motioning for Erik to try again. “Charles has a long way to go before he can pick out something quite so intricate out of an unwelcoming mind. And as for making me… come now, you know him better than that. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to resign yourself to uncertainty.”

“And you’re certain of everything aren’t you?” said Erik. His heart was starting to pound with adrenaline. He turned back to the puzzle and concentrated. The ring twirled for a second, and then he whipped it down the snaking wire, not even slowing for the bends, and slammed it to a neat halt at the end. “I could kill you right now. You’re all on your own. Your telepath’s not here, there’s nothing to stop me.”

Stryker didn’t even twitch. “My colleague had no power to stop you on Sunday either,” he said easily. “You could have killed me then, and yet I remain alive. Now, shall we see how you’re progressing with the other metals? The copper, if you please.”

For a moment, Erik imagined just doing it. Surely he couldn’t have been blamed for driving a metal spike through that smug, complacent face, Stryker deserved it, for being sure that Erik wouldn’t. He deserved to be shown that he couldn’t manipulate everyone and predict everything, and he deserved to be shown in an extremely bloody, painful and final way. It would have only taken a flick of Erik’s finger to make a blade and slash him across the throat. But Stryker was right. Erik wasn’t that stupid, even if he wished he was.

With a regretful look at a lovely, lethal piece of steel he turned his attention to the smaller ball of polished metal further down the table. Copper had always been a challenge, vibrant, warm, rich, and as slippery as a bar of soap. Moulding it according to Stryker’s instructions took intense concentration. Erik made each movement slow and precise, holding the metal in his hands and stroking the changes through from the surface to the core. It took him five minutes to achieve what he could do in a blink with a lump of iron but in spite of that he felt defiantly triumphant as he put it down. A couple of years before he could only have pushed the stuff unpredictably around the room, leaving dents in the walls and sending doctors leaping sideways out of its path.

“Excellent, excellent.” Striker’s smirk wasn’t remotely subtle any longer. “I do complement you on your control. Control is such a valuable trait… especially when one is controlling something so powerful, wouldn’t you agree?”

The overt self-satisfaction in the words made Erik’s skin itch and his fists clench. “Go fuck yourself,” he snapped, before he could think.

Stryker responded with the barest twitch of an eyebrow. Then he just stood there, patient and impassive. The silence stretched horribly, and after a few seconds Erik was gripped with an almost uncontrollable urge to apologise. He tightened his jaw and pushed it away. He had to be losing his mind, talking about killing the man direct to his face and then wanting to say sorry for swearing.

Finally Stryker turned back to the table of metals. “I think we’d better continue, don’t you?” he said.

Erik glowered his way through the rest of the test until it was finally time to take out his aggression with the application of raw force to heavy objects. Out behind the test centre he picked up a couple of steel blocks from the stack piled up against one of the outbuildings. “What do you want me to do?”

“Not the blocks today, Mr Lehnsherr. We’ll be working with something a little larger.”

Erik groaned inwardly. “What something?” he asked, grimly aware that a departure from routine probably meant the start of yet another mind game. He glanced around. There was nothing else set out for him. Something big, he thought, and reached out. There was nothing bigger than the blocks in the outbuilding – a stack of ten half-ton industrial weights was a whole lot of metal, even if he usually only played with two or three. Further away, then. He spread his awareness out. After a second’s fumbling he found it. His head turned automatically back towards the main field and his body followed, feet taking him down the concrete path and round the corner of the wire mesh fence.

He came to a stunned halt.

The thing _loomed_. It was a dump truck, a giant version of the kind kids played with in sandboxes, drawn neatly up on the grass close to the fence that separated the field from the neighbouring parking lot, so bright and new and cherry red that it really could have been a plastic toy. He’d seen ones like it by the working quarry fifteen or so miles away. Their engines sounded like roaring animals and they hauled loads of rubble large enough to fill a swimming pool.

“Something to provide you with a challenge,” said Stryker smoothly.

Erik stared at him. Then he stared at the truck again. “You’re kidding,” he said. “That thing has to weigh twenty tons.”

“Closer to thirty, in fact.”

“I can’t lift that much.” He was trying to keep his temper but if he’d been Charles he would have been pouting. This was the usually the one bit of the test that didn’t suck, all he had to do was fling stuff around until he was exhausted and then it was all over save the ritual bloodletting. But he was looking at a steroid-enhanced hunk of metal which was so far beyond his capability to lift that it wasn’t even funny.

“Nonetheless, I’d like you to make the attempt,” said Stryker, extending his hand in a politely encouraging gesture.

“Why?” Erik walked forwards despite himself, stroking his mind over the solid body of the truck, because… well, it was kind of nice. Its wheels came up to his chest, and there was enough metal in it to make ripples in the universe. “There’s no point. Come on, you know this is bullshit.”

Stryker tapped his pen against his teeth and made another note on his clipboard. “Mr Lehnsherr, I must remind you that you’re legally obliged to cooperate with these tests and I am legally obliged to report it if you don’t.” He smiled falsely. “Of course I can’t force you. If you’re not willing to try you may go and give your sample.”

Erik gritted his teeth. “No. I’m cooperating, all right? I’m just telling you I can’t do it.”

Stryker gave him a fatherly smile. “We’ll see, won’t we? Try to get it off the ground.”

Fine, Erik decided. If that was the way Stryker wanted to play it. He ran a hand down his face, trying to brush away the frustration and put himself in the kind of mood where he was okay with wasting his time straining to lift the truck for a few minutes and then giving up. Dull but straightforward. No big deal.

He stretched out his hand. The truck was too big to manage any other way, he’d need the focus if there was to be the least chance of his moving it. Balance, he told himself, finding places to anchor himself and drawing together the different forces he could use to push away from the ground.

The first attempt confirmed his initial assessment of _fucking impossible_. The solid metal was a dead weight that shifted in opposition to every move he made, pressing him back down again. Irritably he twisted his wrist for better control, trying to tug the metal away from the world’s gravity. There was a slight sensation of lift. He managed a smile. _Screw you, gravity_. It was a pretty pathetic force, really. Jubilee didn’t bother with it at all.

Another hint of motion. The truck jerked, almost invisibly, but for just a moment the suspension wasn’t supporting the body’s weight.

Erik let go with long, relieved exhalation. “There. Moved it. Are we done?”

Stryker glanced down at his watch and ran a finger down his clipboard, then flicked back through some of the older pages. “Oh, I think you can do better than that. We’ve got plenty of time, Mr Lehnsherr. Please try your hardest.”

Erik bit back another regrettable set of swear words. He’d already tried his hardest. Trying his hardest had shifted the truck about three inches into the air. He reached out his hand again, wishing that if he had to work this hard he could be doing something more productive, like, say, wrapping a strip of metal around Stryker’s a chest and throwing him a few hundred feet straight up. He gritted his teeth and tried again, pushing so hard he had to do the stupid reaching and clenching thing with his fingers. Azazel said it made him look like he was trying to grab a girl’s breasts while the police were dragging him away. It was embarrassing at the best of times. In front of Stryker it was infuriating.

“You’re doing very well, Mr Lehnsherr,” said Stryker. “You have the capability for quite incredible strength.”

“Thanks,” Erik managed, trying for unconcerned sarcasm even as he could feel sweat trickling over one eyebrow. “That means so much to me, coming from you.”

Stryker laughed. It wasn’t quite his normal, genial laugh. There was a hint of cruelty to it. “It wasn’t entirely a compliment,” he said. “More a warning, in fact. I think sometimes you don’t realise how valuable your strength is to others. It makes you… interesting. Attractive, even. Especially when they are able to bend you to their own purposes.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

There was an ominous pause. Stryker’s voice hardened. “I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive, if I were you. I’m afraid you have rather a history of suggestibility in these matters.”

“Fuck off.” He was really sweating by that point. He wanted to wipe the drips out of his eyes but the truck was starting to shift and he couldn’t drop his hands.

“Consider your relationship with Sebastian Shaw,” Stryker continued, as though Erik hadn’t spoken. “It amused him, I think, that you were so powerful and yet so entirely under his control, but it did not amuse us. And then you proved that you could be somewhat of a lose canon when left to your own devices, so naturally we felt it was time to take control of you ourselves. As I say, you could be extremely valuable if used correctly.”

“You can’t use me,” Erik panted furiously, wrenching at the metal with both hands outstretched. “I’m not your chess piece.”

“No,” said Stryker, “not mine.” His tone made Erik glance away from the truck for a moment. Striker shot him a sardonic smile. “Not mine, but somebody’s.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” gasped Erik, turning his eyes unwillingly back to his task. Over his own laboured breathing he heard the scratch of the pen on the clipboard again.

“Keep going, Mr Lehnsherr,” Stryker ordered. “I mean, of course, that I hadn’t calculated for Charles Xavier to develop such a considerable influence over you. I assumed your relationship with Mr Shaw would have taught you to guard against that kind of manipulation. Still, Charles has repeatedly defied expectations. No matter. We cannot plan for every eventuality. One must adapt.”

The truck shuddered. Erik felt his hand start to shake along with it. Lying son-of-a-bitch, he told himself. It was more of Stryker’s headfuck bullshit, trying to make him suspicious all over again. Charles didn’t use people, or control people or… no, he wasn’t listening to this.

“After all, we needed a means of keeping you out of trouble,” Stryker continued calmly. “Now, fortunately, you’ve done the job for us. We’ve been keeping a close watch on Mr Xavier’s attitudes, and I have to say, from our point of view you couldn’t have made a better choice.”

“Shut up. Just shut up, do you think I’m stupid?” The truck jerked. Erik didn’t know when it left the ground, but he was holding it there. He could feel it, as though it really was a toy in his hands made of metal barely thicker than tinfoil. “Charles isn’t controlling me. Nobody controls me.”

“Oh, I beg to differ.”

“You can beg whatever you want,” Erik grated. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Stryker stepped forwards into the edge of Erik’s sightline, tilting his head to consider the floating truck. “Really, Mr Lehnsherr, can you honestly tell me that you haven’t noticed Charles’s… subtleties? I don’t think I’ve met a more natural liar in my life.” He chuckled gently. “And it takes one to know one, as they say.”

“You don’t know him!”

The world was tinted red. Cheerful cherry coloured paint, the pulse of Stryker’s iron-rich blood through his veins, Erik’s own anger hot at the edges of his vision. His body seemed to crackle.

“Leave us alone! Just leave us both alone!”

His fingers closed around the tiny tinfoil ghost of the truck.

Hanging there in the air, thirty tons of metal crumpled. Paint chipped away from the buckled plates and showered down onto the grass. The wheels spun furiously at nothing, smoking as the tires burned against their rims.

For a silent second or so after the wail of tortured metal died away, Erik was too shocked even to let go. Then the wreckage fell out of the air. It hit the ground from twenty feet up, sending a shockwave like a minor earthquake across the turf. Glass spat from the shattered windows. The cab lolled sideways like a broken neck.

A million miles away, Stryker gave a short laugh. “Excellent,” he said. “Very well done indeed.”

“Fuck,” Erik whispered. He pulled his hands back in to his chest, cradling his right in his left. Charles was momentarily blotted from his mind. The level of destruction was horrendous, a beautiful piece of equipment turned instantly to scrap metal. Insanely, all he could think was, _Please don’t make me pay for it._

Styker gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder, thought Erik barely registered it. “Well,” he said, “this test has answered many questions for both of us. I think we’ll end there. I’ll need to see you less often in future, Mr Lehnsherr, now your situation has found an equilibrium. This may not be my ideal outcome, but at least I feel that I am leaving you in a safe pair of hands. Do say hello to Charles for me.”

He tucked his pen into his breast pocket and turned away.

Five minutes later Erik found himself in the bathroom, slumped over the sinks and shaking from exhaustion and god knew what else. The face looking back at him from the mirror was white and staring, like he’d witnessed a road accident or something. Well, definitely a vehicular incident, he thought, with a manic grin that didn’t make his face look any more human. Destroying a small fortune’s worth of construction equipment would do that to a person. Incidentally, so would the idea that they didn’t need to be controlled by an evil secret agency anymore, since their boyfriend already had it covered.

“Erik?”

It was Mike’s voice, out in the corridor. Behind Erik the door swung open. A scrunched-up paper towel caught under it made a gentle sweeping noise across the rough tiles.

“Erik,” Mike called again, “are you… oh, there you are.” He stepped inside, his customary cheerful expression melting into concern. Erik met his eyes in the mirror and couldn’t even find the will to glare.

Mike sighed. “Oh dear,” he said, coming forwards to rest a friendly hand between Erik’s shoulder blades. “It’s been one of those days for you, hasn’t it? I saw the truck, everyone’s going out and looking at it. No wonder you look so tired. Come on, let’s get the check-up over with so you can get out of here.”

Erik nodded dumbly, head bowed.

The familiarity of the routine calmed him. Mike kept up a stream of pointless talk in a sympathetic tone that should have been infuriating but somehow managed to help Erik’s lungs expand back to their usual size. It was all so ordinary, the urine sample, the blood pressure cuff, the questions, telling minor lies about how much he drank and smoked. Roll up your sleeve. Metal sliding between his cells. Press on this. All done.

He shouldered his way out of the main door with a couple of cookies and a cup of juice inside him. Mike had insisted.

Charles was waiting outside. He ought to have been down in the café with the other concerned members of the brand new rights movement. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d stayed there and put off their meeting for just a few minutes more. Looking down at him, Erik waited for the feeling. He knew it was coming. The whirl in his head as Stryker’s words replayed themselves with every different meaning and connotation. The niggling worries that he would try and fail to supress, whether it was the truth or a bluff or a double bluff, whether being with Charles really meant he was playing straight into Stryker’s hands. The way Charles would look different, even though nothing had changed, and how it was going to _hurt_.

Charles smiled and stepped in for a hug, running soothing hands down Erik’s face and pressing closer, draping his solid warmth against Erik’s chest. Erik held him. It was so nice to be touched and comforted after Stryker. It was horrible to know that it wasn’t going to last.

“How did it go?” Charles asked. “I’m guessing not so well.” His thoughts seeped out a little, spreading a kind of peace through the whole of the overheated parking lot. Erik should have found that disturbing. He should have wondered what it meant that Charles could calm him so easily, if it would make him soft and well-behaved and more likely to agree that peace was always the best option. He should have been asking ask whether Charles was pushing him into things, and whether it was on purpose or unconscious, instinctive, something that Charles learned as a child trying to get what he needed from people who didn’t care enough to give it.

He should have been worried. But no matter how he thought it over, he didn’t feel it. All of that was just what Charles did. Erik had known it for a long time. He was used to looking at Charles that way, with a hint of… not distrust, but calculation. Charles’s smile never quite revealed what was going on beneath it. He was manipulative, in his own way. But he was more honest with Erik than with anyone, and of all people Erik was the best equipped to see through his facade.

“It sucked. It was a total disaster,” said Erik, not paying attention to what he was saying. “I got mad and squished a giant dump truck.” He nuzzled his head against Charles’s ear, breathing in the scent of shampoo and skin, still waiting for pain that didn’t come. How could it be so easy? He should have been freaking out. That was what always happened. That was what Stryker always did to him. But there was no uncertainty, not even a hint. Instead, there was just a vast sense of relief.

“Dump truck? Um… okay, that’s new.” Charles’s mouth quirked briefly, probably trying to imagine the scene. Then he went serious. He sighed and rested his head against Erik’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I wish you didn’t have to do this. I know he gets to you.”

“He didn’t get to me,” said Erik. He felt so light he wanted to laugh. He wrapped his arms around Charles and squeezed. “Not this time.”

 

***

  
“I’ll be out for dinner,” said Erik, about an hour later. He pressed the phone firmly to his ear so he could hear over the sound of laughter. “No, mom, it went fine. Really. All done for another month. No, I’m not tired, and I’m not _four years old_. We’re going to get some pizza and hang out.”

He made a face across the growing pile of dry twigs and branches that Jubilee and Peter had been collecting. Charles met his eyes and grinned before turning back to teasing Raven, both of them bubbling over with the general party atmosphere. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Erik got the feeling that they had all been bracing for disaster and were just happy to be sitting in the quarry in the sunshine instead of waiting in the police station while he was charged with aggravated assault.

He was pretty relieved about that too, come to think of it.

After a moment he realised that his mom had stopped talking about the evils of pizza and was saying his name impatiently.

“What?” he said. “Oh. Yeah, of course Charles is here. And a bunch of people. Just people, mom. Okay, I have to go.” He sighed. “I’m hanging up.”

“Erik,” Peter yelled. “Come help us out.”

“With what?”

“This log’s too big,” said Jubilee, gesturing at something that was less a log and more the trunk of Yggdrasill. “We need to chop it up.”

“Give me a break.” His powers still felt thin and shaky, and probably would until he’d eaten a decent percentage of a pizza. “Where’s Havok? Why can’t he do it?”

“He’s not here.” Jubilee made an impatient face. “Come on, Erik. We need stuff to burn, right?”

Erik groaned and pushed himself to his feet. “Yeah,” he admitted.

“Obviously,” Charles added, deadly serious, before breaking into a grin.

Erik grinned back over his shoulder as he went. By the time he’d played axe and buzz saw there was enough wood to last for as long as they wanted to stay out, and the half-built bonfire in the blackened dip in the rocks was reaching the size where it could have roasted a hog once they’d put a match to it.

The group around Charles had magically acquired food, which made it all the more attractive for Erik to go over and nuzzle up to him, pulling him close and stealing his pizza in one smooth movement.

“Where did the beer come from?”

“Tony,” said Charles, snagging a bottle from the ground and another slice of pizza from the box, and presenting them both to Erik with the gravitas of a maître d’.

The beer wasn’t as cold as it have might been, but it went down smoothly. Erik felt a tiny bit more tension seep out of his shoulders.

“Don’t get too drunk,” he told Charles, kissing the corner of his jaw. “I’m taking you home after and you’re going to want to be awake for it.”

“Dragging me off to your cave.”

Erik grinned. “Yeah. And look, I made fire.”

“Neanderthal.”

_You love it_ , he thought, flashing a mental image of slinging a fur-clad Charles over his shoulder and carrying him away.

Charles choked on a laugh. _Maybe. I know I love you._

Peter put his face in his hands with a low moan. “Oh god, stop brain-fucking or get a room.”

The chorus of fervent agreement from around the fire made Charles blush and wriggle away to coax Peter into forgiveness with talk of gene splicing. Erik let him go, and spent the next half hour or so tossing a football around with Azazel as dusk fell around them.

It was half dark already when Azazel came to a halt and tossed the ball deliberately wide.

Erik spun awkwardly to follow its path, almost stumbling on the turn. He saw Havok standing on the track down from where they’d parked their cars. Beside him, one foot planted forwards to brace for the catch, was Riptide.

Erik’s jaw muscles clenched. Every part of him tensed as he stalked over. He could feel a ghost of remembered pain in his knuckles from where they had collided hard with Riptides jaw.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Riptide glared down at the ball in his hands. His mouth twitched uncertainly. After a second’s pause he grunted, “Blame Havok. I didn’t want to come.”

“I told him to,” said Havok, as though there was nothing at all surprising in it. “I mean, come on Erik. That thing with Charles was a dickwad move, but it’s Rip, you know? You can’t stay mad forever, right?”

Erik stared at him. It was hard to say anything truly vicious in the face of Havok’s general good nature, but seriously, _what the fuck?_

“He really can,” said Riptide, taking a step backwards. He looked ready to flee, but unwilling, as though somehow he was hopeful, deep down. Erik realised, almost painfully, that they’d been best friends, Riptide and Havok. They’d been really close, and Havok had taken Charles’s side without a second thought.

He felt his fury melting into exasperation. “Yeah, I really can. Jesus, Rip, first it’s Sebastian fucking Shaw, and now you don’t even dare come near me without Havok to protect you. _Havok_ , for fuck’s sake. Even you can’t be that pathetic.”

“Hey, I’m not protecting anyone,” Havok objected. “How about if I hold him still and you hit him a few more times?”

“Screw you,” snapped Riptide.

Havok grinned. “Yeah, man, I love you too.”

“Erik?”

It was Charles, wandering up nibbling on another slice of pizza. He smiled vaguely. “Oh, hello Riptide.”

Instinctively, Erik shouldered slightly in front, holding out a shielding arm. Charles gave a little sigh and stepped around him. “It’s good to see you,” he said.

“Right…” said Riptide, glancing sidewise at Havok, who made an imperative gesture. “You too, I guess.” He shifted on his feet, one hand clenching on the end of the ball, and fixed his gaze on the rocks about a foot to the left of where Charles was standing. “Look, uh, Charles, I should say sorry about what happened. You know, at Tony’s party.”

Charles looked at him, head on one side. He seemed to be deep in thought. Finally he asked, “Do you have beer?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah,” said Riptide, looking even more uncertain. He tucked the football under his arm and picked up a carrier bag from by his feet, jiggling it by way of demonstration. “Brought a six pack. And some chips.”

Charles nodded. “I will accept them as your penance. This way.”

He looked perfectly steady on his feet, but Erik knew that owlish look and the all-encompassing friendliness. “You’re drunk,” he said wearily.

Charles stuck out his tongue. “Only a little bit. And now I’m going to get a teeny bit drunker. Come and be friendly and maybe I’ll let you all have one of my nice new beers.”

“Charles, those are half mine,” Havok grumbled. “You can’t confiscate them.”

“Are they? Well, then you can definitely have one.”

“Hey!”

“Take it up with Erik,” said Charles.

Havok groaned, giving it up as unwinnable. Riptide shot a cautious, questioning look at Erik, who found himself shrugging. Like a lot of things the grudge over Seb didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. “Whatever,” he said. “Go, stay, do what you want. Just don’t piss me off again or I’ll crush you inside your own car.”

“Don’t you fucking touch my car,” said Riptide. He was scowling, but something else in his face seemed to ease. In that moment Erik had to wonder what he’d been doing lately and who he’d been hanging out with. Not with them, certainly, his best friends since middle school. It had been Charles’s presence that sent him to Seb, Charles who had cost him his place in the group. Rip had deserved it and worse, but in a way it was a miracle he’d come back at all.

“Beer,” Charles yelled from halfway to the fire, waving encouragingly. “Erik!”

Riptide hefted the carrier bag. “I still hate your boyfriend,” he said, with a strange smile that Erik had never seen before. “Still, I guess I do owe him a beer.”

 

***

 

Despite Erik’s best efforts, Charles was cheerfully tipsy and half asleep by the time they got home. Erik rolled him into bed and climbed in after him, squishing himself into the awkward space against the wall.

He couldn't sleep. Riptide’s return had shaken him. The world behind his eyes swirled with choices and compromises, changing allegiances, people who would admit they’re wrong, or pretend to, to get what they needed.

“Love you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to Charles’s temple.

At times, it was everything he needed, this simple, straightforward love. And it was such an awful responsibility, knowing that Charles wouldn’t be happy without him.

Charles made a tiny snuffling noise. He was dead to the world, dreaming gentle, jumbled dreams, oblivious to the twisted mazes and dead ends of Erik’s thoughts. His warm body pressed up against Erik’s propping elbow, a dead weight, taking up far too much of the bed. It took Erik a bit of wriggling to settle them both with a semblance of comfort. Charles clung determinedly to sleep throughout, not even mumbling, his breaths slow and even. He would wake unwillingly at Erik’s alarm, muzzy from the alcohol, mumbling complaints until Erik brought him water and dragged him into the shower. And they would eat their breakfast and go to school and be utterly normal, and Erik wouldn’t say a word, but they’d both know that deep down they were still fighting the hopeless, endless battle, the one where they’d both picked a side and neither one of them was sure who was right.

 

***

 

In the end, the ceasefire was officially laid out.

“Please,” Charles said to him, after school on Friday, “Erik, just for one day, let’s forget it all. We can be teenagers at senior prom. There’ll be slow dancing and spiked punch and everyone in their best clothes and people having romantic crises and crying in the bathrooms, just like in those awful movies. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“You have a strange idea of a good time,” said Erik, slinging an arm around him, speaking mostly into the hair above his ear. His mind latched on tight to the thought, and the answer was yes. He couldn’t give Charles everything, but he could give him that much.

Charles knew it, of course, and there was a relieved moment of stillness as the atmosphere lightened, like the change in pressure after a storm. He wriggled round to wrinkle his nose and grin, sliding into a teasing mode that meant they were starting right away, no more worrying allowed. “Stop being grouchy, it’s going to be wonderful. Did I mention that my date is the captain of the football team? He’s really hot.” He made a thoughtful face. “You know, he says he’s crazy about me but I’m a bit worried that he might expect me to put out after the dance.”

“Yeah, he might,” said Erik. “Some guys are dicks like that.”

Charles pouted. “Well that’s just going to ruin my night.”

He was the perfect picture of petulant disapproval. Erik tugged him closed and kissed him on the nose. “How about we ruin this afternoon instead?”

“That,” said Charles, “is an excellent idea.”

 

***

 

On Saturday morning Erik woke feeling happy. It was so unusual that he sat up at once, glancing around and trying to work out what was different. No Charles – he hadn’t stayed over. It was luxuriously late, but he almost always woke late on Saturdays.

There was the prom that night, of course. But he couldn’t seriously be so excited about senior prom. It was just a dance in the gym and the usual insane after-party at Tony’s. Okay, it would be nice to see Charles in a tux and maybe get a cheesy photo of the two of them in front of some kind of sparkly backdrop. And he had a rose for Charles’s buttonhole which was keeping fresh in the fridge, the same kind of red rose that he’d once given him in front of everyone on the steps of the school. It was a silly gesture, it wasn’t like Charles would remember what type of rose it had been the first time round, but Erik had wanted to do it anyway. And his own tux looked pretty good. Actually, Charles would probably flip a little bit when he saw it. But it was no big deal.

With some disgust, he realised he was grinning all over his face.

To complete a great morning there were pancakes for breakfast, his dad smiling gently from the stove while his mom mainlined coffee and made plans for the day. Unlike her, Erik’s own plans didn’t involve shopping or meeting friends or working in the garden. Pretty much they just involved sex.

Charles in a tux. It was an image that lingered.

A quick jerk-off session in the shower helped a little, but his body was yearning for the real thing. They’d probably have plenty of drunken post-prom sex at Tony’s that night – the Stark mansion was well-equipped with bedrooms – but the thought of a whole day of just being kids, of maybe driving out into the hills and finding some private spot, just them and a picnic blanket and the blue sky, a lazy make-out session and then peeling off Charles’s jeans, sliding down his underwear…

His phone rang.

“What do you want?” he demanded, because he’d checked the caller ID and it couldn’t be good.

“Decorations,” Emma told him, just as short. “I need things pinned to the ceiling. You’re helping.”

“Christ, Em, use a stepladder. I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Sugar, it’s this or I ask Charles to do it, and it’ll take him a lot longer than it’ll take you.”

Erik stifled a groan of despair. “He’ll say no. We have plans.”

Emma laughed. “You’re so adorably delusional. Be at the hall in half an hour.”

She hung up.

Erik lowered the phone from his ear and glared at it, cursing both Emma’s devious mind and Charles’s eternal willingness to oblige. After a minute or so of silently absorbing his irritation it rang again.

“Emma says you’re helping her with decorating,” Charles said cheerfully on the other end of the line. “I’ll meet you there so I can watch you be an all-powerful master of magnetism.”

“She’s making me levitate thumbtacks.”

“Thumbtacks come under the heading of things you all-powerfully magnetise,” Charles agreed earnestly. “Also there might be nails. And manly toolboxes and electric cables. And you can take your shirt off.”

“Why would I take my shirt off?”

“Who needs a reason?”

Looking at it like that, Erik began to feel a bit better about the whole thing. Less so when Emma presented him with about ten miles of sparkling icicle-style strandy stuff and several billion thumbtacks.

He was too annoyed even to glare.

“You bitch, Em, you planned this, there’s no way you could do this without me.”

Emma trilled a laugh. “You’re a resource at my disposal, Erik. Of course I planned for you.”

“Fuck you. You know what I could be doing right now?”

“Darling, it’s not as though you’re in a dry spell.”

Erik growled something obscene and went to lie on his back in the middle of the floor. The strands had some kind of metallic glitter sprinkled over them, enough for him to feel but far too little to grasp and lift. It was easiest to pinch the head of a thumbtack around the string as he went and embed it in the ceiling before catching up the next section with the next tack. Once he got into a rhythm the task was quick and almost soothing, pinch-lift-jab over and over, with a little stream of thumbtacks flowing steadily upwards. By the time Charles arrived half the ceiling was covered with rippling tendrils and Erik was starting to see spots in front of his eyes.

“Hello,” said Charles, as Erik propped himself up on his elbows to receive a kiss. “Having fun?”

“Really, really not.” _I want to push you down right here and suck your cock_ , he thought, _and Emma is a slave-driving sociopath with a heart of ice._

_I heard that,_ Emma’s voice said sweetly in his head, as Charles blushed fiery red and tried to suppress a smile.

_Good,_ Erik thought viciously back at her.

_Behave_ , Charles told them both. _Except, actually, let’s misbehave._

This last was directed to Erik on something more like a private channel, accompanied by a mental image that had him hastily dragging Charles off to the farthest bathroom.

Some twenty minutes later, when they slunk back in, flushed, dazed and dishevelled, Emma pinned them with a disgusted glare from across the room. _You’re both shameless,_ she told them, _and also terribly boring. Remind me to give you some pointers._

Charles looked more horrified than Erik had ever seen him, big eyes blinking in shock, and Erik couldn’t help cracking up. Astonishingly enough, Emma burst out laughing too, and came over to give Charles a hug, which he returned but wriggled out of after a couple of seconds, moving to huddle against Erik and thinking firmly, _If you get a white leather catsuit and a whip I am never, ever speaking to you again._

Later on, when Erik remembered Emma’s untroubled laugh, he realised that whatever game of denial he and Charles were playing that day, she was playing it too.

 

***

 

“Mom, will you quit it?” Erik complained. “I can dress myself.”

“No,” said his mother, “you can’t. Not tonight. You’re going to your prom looking perfect if I have to chloroform you and arrange your clothes while you sleep.” She fussed over him, tweaking and tucking things that were going to get untweaked and untucked the second he moved. “There. Now you look nice.”

“Thanks,” said Erik patiently.

She took a step back, looking him up and down, and suddenly there was something else in her expression than motherly micromanagement.

“You look so grown up. Oh, Erik.” She smiled at him but her eyes were suspiciously shiny. “I remember when you were first put in my arms, this little, helpless thing, and now…”

“Mom.”

She wiped at her eyes. “Have a wonderful night, sweetheart. Give my love to Charles. You look after that boy, you hear, and tell him… tell him to look after you.”

“Mom…” said Erik again. “Oh god, please don’t cry.”

She hugged him briefly and pushed him towards the door. “I’m not crying. How could I be crying? I’m not going to get tears on that tuxedo, not after I’ve fixed you up. Go. Go on.”

 

***

 

He’d made a promise. That night was about being kids at the prom. They would walk into the gym arm in arm in their fancy clothes and slow-dance in a romantic haze, and then move on to Tony’s after-party to enjoy some much less wholesome pursuits. You only got one senior prom. It was special.

“Erik Lehnsherr,” said Erik experimentally, pulling the car over and peering at himself in the mirror. If he tilted his head just right his face melded into the perfect teen movie cliché, the school bad boy tamed by love. “Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier.” It sounded good, saying their names, it made it feel real.

As he walked through the mansion gate the main door opened and Charles slipped out, closing it behind him so quietly that there was barely a click. Erik retreated behind the gatepost and waited, out of sight, while Charles’s footsteps scrunched over the gravel towards him. He came into view all freckled innocence and neatly combed hair, like a figure in an old photograph, both breathtaking and heartbreakingly delicate.

For a moment they just stared at each other. Then Charles swallowed and said, “Turn around, please. Slowly.”

Erik settled his thoughts. He obligingly spun on the spot, coming full circle with a questioning look. “Nice?”

“Um, yes.” The lascivious smile that spread across Charles’s face instantly dispelled any hint of vulnerability. “Very nice indeed.”

“You too,” said Erik feelingly. “Come here.” He held out the flower.

Charles blinked at it, lifted his eyes to Erik’s, and blinked again. “You’re a gigantic sap,” he said, sounding more than a little choked up.

Erik grinned, because yeah, he was.

 

***

 

“Oh wow,” said Tony. “Steve, they’re so pretty. Can I keep them?”

Steve sighed his familiar, long-suffering sigh and ushered the two of them into the hall, playing the host because Tony so obviously wasn’t. “Hey Erik. Hey Charles. Let me get you guys a beer.”

It wasn’t a party yet, though it would be after the prom. It was just a gathering, people coming in and out, lounging around, sipping beer, chatting and eating extremely carefully, determined not to get the least smear on their outfits. One of the late arrivals, blonde and too grown up in a lacy dress, was Raven.

“Wait, what? She can’t come,” Erik objected as Charles dragged him to the door to greet her. “She’s a sophomore. She’s fifteen.”

“It’s not as though anyone’s going to know it’s her,” said Charles cheerfully. “And she’s not going to have any alcohol. Absolutely not. Not a sip. Come on, Raven, let’s get you a soda.”

“Yes Charles,” she said obediently, tucking her arm into his and flashing her best _‘fuck you’_ look over her shoulder at Erik.

“I’m tasting that soda,” Erik called after them.

 

***

 

Raven was still reasonably sober when they all scrambled out of Tony’s limo – actually _Tony’s_ limo, not hired. Just one he’d had hanging around in the garage somewhere. Everyone else was in what Charles called ‘a party mood,’ giggling as they made their way into the hall.

They all stopped dead.

Erik had seen most of the decorations before, but they looked a hundred times more impressive with the full effect of the lighting and the finished backdrops in place. Emma hadn’t gone for a theme unless you counted white, which was pretty much a given, but the place had an undeniable fairytale feel with its snowy drapes and sparkles. There were graceful columns, little nooks under glittering arches and Erik’s rustling ice-strand ceiling that was somehow in constant motion, ripples flowing across it like the wind on water.

“Wow,” said Peter, and it didn’t sound like he was just saying it to please Mary-Jane. Out of the corner of his eye Erik caught Azazel pressing a kiss to Emma’s hair in silent congratulation.

Charles was glowing. _This is so silly,_ he thought joyfully. _I can’t believe I’m actually at a prom._

 

***

 

Erik jostled his way through the crowd that had tumbled and spread out to fill the space. Even though he’d seen everyone at school the day before, the greetings felt like a vital part of the ritual. Wherever he went, people noticed him. It felt like he'd shared dirty jokes and back-slaps with every single member of the football team, and said hi to half a hundred other humans that he'd somehow got to know. Charles had slid away from his side quite early on, in order to tell everyone he met how lovely they looked and to be hugged affectionately and told he was adorable in turn. Erik had downed another glass of punch by the time he found him again, standing at the side of the room watching a vaguely familiar human girl. No, he realised. Not the girl, the gorgeous fair haired guy she was laughing with.

Just as Erik opened his mouth to ask why, the guy’s eyes flashed golden under the lights.

Charles glanced up at him, catching the judder of emotion, and shrugged ruefully. _She’s just having fun._

_Dangerous fun._ There was no real difference between tricking her way into a party and tricking her way into a flirtation, but somehow Erik knew that she was pushing the boundaries between disguise and deceit. If someone had been watching - and it felt like someone was always watching - that kind of fun could set off alarm bells and breed contingency plans.

“Erik,” said Charles, laying a hand on his arm, “don’t.”

Erik blinked the images away. “Sorry.” No though of jail cells that night. No secrets, no white coats and blood.

Charles’s smile was just slightly off, not enough that anyone else would have noticed. He took a little huffing breath. “Do you want to dance?”

The smile forced Erik to get a grip, to relax back into the atmosphere, because there was no way in hell that he was spoiling tonight. “What happens if I say no?” he said, as naturally as he could.

“Possibly the universe explodes,” said Charles, “because I think there’s some kind of physical law that says you can’t not dance with me tonight.”

Erik grinned, and it really was natural. “I guess I can do it to save the universe.”

“My hero.” Charles took his hand and drew them together, his steps already falling in time with the music.

 

***

 

At most other school dances Erik had only danced with the girls, and sometimes Havok as joke. This felt different. It took him a few beats to work out that this time he wasn’t the one calling the shots.

“How come you get to lead?” he complained.

“Because you don't know anything about dancing,” said Charles, grinning and guiding him smoothly into the centre of the floor.

“And you do?”

“Well, yes, actually. I took lessons when I was little. Now, relax.” He slid his arms more firmly around Erik, wrinkling his nose with a hint of discontent. “It’s a shame you’re so tall, but there’s not much we can do about that.”

“Borrow Emma’s high heels.”

“I hate you.”

Charles did know what he was doing. He was good enough that Erik could just hang on and go wherever he was pushed, and from the whistles they got it must have looked okay. There was even a smattering of applause as the song ended. Erik realised that they were standing in a little clear space with a whole bunch of people watching, which should have been embarrassing, but wasn’t. He grinned around at the spectators, thinking, _yeah, my boyfriend is totally fucking awesome._

_Likewise,_ Charles thought at him, tugging him closer as the music melted into something slow and sultry. The dance floor filled up with couples. Erik figured they’d done their bit with the whole showing off thing, and it would be okay just to shift from foot to foot and whisper and kiss.

At the end of the next song Jan swept up imperiously and extended her hand to Charles. “You may have the pleasure of this dance,” she informed him. Erik was claimed by Pepper for about a song and a half, and followed that up by dragging a loudly protesting Havok into what might generously have been called a waltz. Then he realised that Tony had usurped Jan’s place, and rushed over to loom and growl while Charles and Tony clung to each other, laughing helplessly.

After that the evening quickly devolved into a free-for-all of partner-swapping, with a conga line stuck in there at some stage. Erik was left wondering how many different people had decided to spike the punch and what the eventual alcohol content turned out to be, and was still wondering, rather hazily, by the time the prom king and queen were announced. Steve and Angel came up to the dais, both looking a little surprised, and Emma stepped in to award them their crowns with a short and incredibly funny speech, which seemed oddly out of character to Erik until Charles elbowed him and whispered, “It’s Raven again.”

Erik choked back a disbelieving laugh and took a second look. Sure enough there were just a few hints of Raven’s body language, and a slight brashness in place of Emma’s unquestioning confidence. He couldn’t worry, he was too drunk and too impressed at the imitation. “What the hell is she doing?” he asked. “Where is Emma, anyhow?”

Charles tilted his head. Then he smiled. “Come outside.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

The quiet outside was like another world. As Erik followed Charles across the parking lot he heard Emma’s unmistakable trilling laugh coming from above. Charles tugged him backwards away from the school until the angle let them see onto the roof. Emma and Azazel were dancing up there without music, above the party. Emma’s white dress glowed in the moonlight. Azazel, in black, was barely visible. It almost looked as though she was dancing alone, until his arm went around her and they swayed together to the non-existent beat.

”I bet she’s leading.”

“Hush,” said Charles, poking him in the side. “It’s lovely.” He smiled and reached down to interlace their fingers. “Everything’s lovely tonight. You know, I can’t remember a time I’ve been happier than this. Not a single one.”

 

***

 

Later, Erik was left with so many images of that night. Raven, dusky blue and beautiful in the shadows under one of the archways, tentatively leaning in to brush her lips against Jubilee’s much more practiced mouth. Steve, up on the podium with his crown crooked and his hair mussed, making some kind of semi-drunken speech which started off being about bright futures but ended as simply, “I’ll miss you.” Angel sprawled on Tony’s couch, her hand tucked possessively into Riptide’s arm, her head resting against his shoulder. Tony’s lascivious grin as he pointed Erik the way to a handy bedroom.

The image that would stay with him the most clearly was Charles, pale and naked, half sobbing for breath as they moved together, half just plain sobbing. There were messy tears trickling down his cheeks which Erik was too breathless to kiss away, although he wanted to, and wanted to say how sorry he was for everything he’d ever done to make Charles cry.

Afterwards, when they were curled up together, Erik felt Charles’s lips move against his skin, shaping a rough, gasping _thank you_.

Their minds were so thoroughly tangled that they barely had a separate thought, and yet he had no idea what Charles was thanking him for.

 

***

 

He woke to a finger poking him firmly in the side.

“It’s almost morning,” said Charles. The words were nearly swallowed up by a yawn. His hair was flattened down on one side, and the corresponding cheek was scrawled with pillow marks. He looked about halfway between drunk and hung over, verging slightly on the drunk side.

“Yeah,” Erik agreed, closing his eyes again and burrowing back under the bed clothes.

“Erik… Erik. Erik.”

“What?” Erik blinked unwillingly as Charles peeled the blanket back from his face. “I’m sleeping.”

“Wake up,” said Charles gently, “please.”

“Why?”

Charles shifted on the bed, stretching and smothering another yawn. “Because… I know it’s silly, but I want to watch the sun come up.”

Erik managed not to say anything regrettable. He managed not to pull the covers back over his head and ignore Charles completely. Instead he took a second to pretend to consider the matter and then said firmly, “It’s too early.”

“It’s not going to wait until later,” said Charles, laughing and leaning down to rub his nose against Erik’s cheek. “Not even for you.”

“Yeah, but… no. Really, no.”

Erik felt a hand ruffle gently through his hair. Charles’s voice was warm and amused and just a little scratchy. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?” he said.

“You’re impossible.” Erik pushed himself up on one elbow and pried his eyes fully open. Through the window the sky was barely lightening, but he couldn’t deny the approaching dawn. “Okay, fine. But only if there’s food. Water and food. Where are my pants?”

They stumbled back into the lounge. Erik’s head felt thick and fuzzy with sleep. Picking his way across a floor littered with trash, and stepping over a couple of sleepers sprawled on sofa cushions he came across a half-full bag of chips. Salt and grease sounded really good. In the kitchen Charles unearthed flat, warm soda and a bunch of bananas. “Perfect,” he said, with a look that was altogether too sparkling for the semi-darkness and the horrendously early hour.

_Back to bed?_ thought Erik, hoping against hope.

“Come on.”

Tony’s house was on the peak of a rise, and the lawn stretched out into a view over the outskirts of town and all the way to the low hills further out, just visible in the pre-dawn gloom. The sun would be cresting those hills soon. Past the pool a handful of sun loungers were set out on the grass. Dragging two of them around to face east left Erik stumbling as the pumping blood drove a haze of leftover alcohol into his brain. He collapsed onto one while Charles settled himself, catlike, onto the other.

They munched for a while. Chips and bananas, Erik discovered, were a surprisingly good combination, though the soda was unpleasantly sweet. They didn’t speak at first, just watched as the dawn broke by tiny increments. Erik found himself happy in a fragile way, but he could feel a change in the expanding stillness as their minds strayed away from the simple sleepy thoughts of morning. It felt like standing on the edge of a precipice.

“We need to talk,” said Charles into the silence. “I mean... you know what I mean.”

“You said we weren’t going to think about it.” Erik felt a tiny shudder run through him, and a moment of dissociation, almost dizziness, that had nothing to do with his hangover.

“For one day we weren’t,” said Charles, sighing. “It’s tomorrow now. The first day of the rest of our lives.”

Even though he’d known it was coming, Erik was still surprised to finally be there. Something had been funnelling down to that point in time. The previous night had been a time to step back, breathe, forget and then return with clearer eyes.

The rest of their lives, Erik told himself, swallowing his fear. There was one part of that idea, just one, that he could cling to with hope. “Charles, this… us. Do you think it’s – you know… do you think it’ll last? In fifty years or something, and still…”

It wasn’t the most coherent question he’d ever asked but he meant it seriously, and Charles took it seriously, pausing, one fingertip brushing against his lip as he thought.

“We’re eighteen,” he said. “Everybody… everyone thinks that their first love is the real thing. I don’t think we can possibly be sure.” He gave a rueful smile. “I’m trying to be logical about it, you understand, rather than just coming straight out and saying that you’re the love of my life.”

“High school sweethearts,” said Erik, staring up at the sky. Wish upon a star, his mind echoed at him. That was the fairy tale. “And they lived happily ever after.”

Charles choked out a laugh, bitter and edged with tears. “There’s isn’t a single word in that sentence that’s guaranteed.”

They both looked upwards for a while longer, avoiding each other’s eyes. The stars were fading out one by one, merging with the blue-grey dawn.

“You want to go out and save the world,” said Charles eventually, “but whenever you talk about leaving it’s always you, not us. You’ve never asked me to go with you.”

Of course he hadn’t. How could he take Charles into danger?

“I don’t want you to,” said Erik. Then, putting into words something that he’d always known, “You wouldn’t, anyway. No matter what I said, you’d never come.”

Charles's fight would always be peaceful protest, civil disobedience, the slow change of minds. He wasn't built to destroy.

“No,” said Charles, “I wouldn’t. But it’s not like that for you.” He paused, picking at the label on the soda bottle before setting it aside and sitting up. “I hear you, you know. I hear you thinking, going over and over it, trying to find the strength to leave everything behind, to be some kind of fighter, this person you could become. But you’re not him. I know you want to go but you haven’t... you haven’t chosen yet.”

Erik shook his head. It was true, and it was shameful. His thoughts had been whirling around the question for so long and he was no closer to knowing what he was going to do.

“I can’t go with you,” Charles continued, a note of desperate finality in his voice, “but you could stay with me.” He took a deep breath and fixed Erik with a look of utter determination. “I need you to. Don’t think anymore. Imagine that the choice is already made. Stay.”

Erik stared at him for what must have been a solid minute. The idea seemed unbelievable. “It’s like telling me to toss a coin for it,” he said. “You can’t do that, you can’t ask me not to think.”

“I can. I am.”

Erik pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He was so tired of it all.

There had always been two choices. There was his way and there was Charles’s way. If he took his own path, with no compromises and no politics, only the righteous fury he felt, the constant pulse of _this is not allowed to happen_ \- if he chose that then there would be no going back.

It would break them. With Charles’s softer methods, careful manipulation, time and sacrifices, allowing others to be sacrificed... at least they’d have a chance.

“Are you going to tell me to trust you?” said Erik, unable to find emotion to put behind the words.

Charles flickered a smile. “Do you?” he asked.

Erik smiled back, strangely amused. “No,” he admitted. “Not about this.”

Time slowed. A long, careful breath stretched out the seconds until he had to speak again. “Charles, you know what you’re asking me, don’t you?”

“Do the wrong thing,” said Charles. He stared out over the forming shadows of the day. “Ignore your conscience, take the easy way out. Hate yourself and hate me for making you do it.” His hand slid into Erik’s, fingers interlocking. “Yes, I know what I’m asking.”

_I can’t,_ Erik wanted to say, but he didn’t. It would have been a lie. Charles was right, he did have a choice. If that was his decision then the words would have to be, _I won’t._

“For the rest of my life?” he asked instead.

Charles shook his head. “It won't be. I know that. But... for as long as you can.”

Perhaps that was the compromise. Perhaps Stryker had been right about it all, he really had known that Erik could end up holding back, fighting a different battle, following a different leader than himself. Choosing love for all the wrong reasons.

Charles was waiting, white faced and tense. Erik managed a smile. “Give me your chess piece,” he said.

Charles didn’t ask why, or frown, or even pause, just fished in his jeans pocket and brought out the little armoured knight. He passed it over silently. Erik turned it over in his hands, tilting it so the light gleamed diffusely off the metal.

Charles’s knight.

If he left, there would be no going back. If he stayed, it wouldn’t be forever. For tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Time for college, perhaps. Time to spend with Charles.

Not forever, but for as long as he could.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like this story to have a happy(ish) ending, stop reading there. If you'd like a realistic view of what happened next, Tawabids has created [Charles Xavier's Wikipedia page](http://tawabids.livejournal.com/6877.html#cutid1) from some 30 years on. It's amazing and it broke my heart.


End file.
